Other Politech messages: http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=poindexter --- From: "Werberg, Sam" <swerbergat_private> To: "'declanat_private'" <declanat_private> Cc: Abraunbergat_private, editorat_private Subject: RE: Data miner replies to Politech, says TIA can ID terrorists Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 15:34:33 -0500 Having followed the data mining space, I agree that it has its usefulness, but the question that Gregory hints at but leaves unanswered is critical: "How many times you will need to flip each coin to find at least one crooked coin?" In other words, how many law-abiding citizens will need to be "flipped", or have their lives turned over, in order to find the terrorist? How many is too many? Yes, the purpose of the TIA experiment is to find the answer to this, but considering that the person in charge of it (Poindexter) was "convicted of conspiracy, lying to Congress, defrauding the government, and destroying evidence", can we trust that any conclusions he provides will be valid or factual? Sam Werberg --- Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 14:10:05 -0700 From: "John W. Durham" <johnwdurhamat_private> Subject: Re: FC: Data miner replies to Politech, says TIA can ID terrorists To: declanat_private Of course, the problem with Mr. Piatetsky-Shapiro's argument is that there's no real assurance that the government will actually employ data mining or will, instead, simply sift the "data" for whatever seems expedient or interesting at the time of the search. Since "intelligence" work is usually done under some time pressure, I find it hard to believe that rigorous methodology will be used. Remember, too, that we now have a government controlled by people who argued successfully against the foundations of statistics in the court cases relating to the use of sampling by the Census Bureau. Not, of course, that politicians would ever have access to the TIA program. --- Please anonymously post my reply to Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro. xxx Yes, this is an oversimplification! Let's start with the fact that there are 280 million people, not a thousand. Two out of a thousand turns out to be 560,000 bad guys, they say we are only looking for 3000 or so, but how would they KNOW? And what are these bits of information anyway? They are subjective things like cash withdrawals, credit card purchases, not Boolean bits, and you want a million transactions for 280 million people? Oh, and you need to do all this in real time if you want to catch "pre-crime." Oh, you infer they can catch every one? Ha! It seems that the FBI et al had enough information so that a lowly agent had the foresight to predict that a plane might be used to crash into a building. Is there going to be any bureaucrat control in the TIA, or will it be run like the Gestapo? In this group there was a report that face recognition cameras couldn't accurately spot the employees at a test airport using willing test subjects. What happens when most of the evidence is analog? What happens when the "bad guys" never committed any crime? If pre-perp prays to Allah 3 times a day for 50 years would he get 55,000 bad guy demerits? If he reads Arabian nights instead of Mien Kompf does he get a Big Brother knock on he door? How can the government not sift through -everyone's- personal data real-time to find the alleged bad guy, who has never done anything bad, and how do you KNOW he/they were going to do something anyway? If someone has too many matches is he an arsonist, too many guns a revolutionary? What programmers are going to write this insightful program to predict crime that hasn't happened unless they know the bad guy's crime already. No you are going to spy on farmers who buy too much fertilizer and people who decide to turn in their credit cards and withdraw an unusual amount of cash because they are not going to participate in the sacking of the Bill of Rights. I am afraid if this continues we will have a default tyranny, one that is capable of doing bad things even if it hasn't done it yet, does that sound familiar? Thomas Jefferson said its our DUTY to overthrow tyranny. But what if we can't because every bit of communication data is linked and scrutinized so WE THE PEOPLE would be completely unable to form peaceful protests out of fear, or effective rebellion because of the sheer power of the state's spy network? I think you data miners are dangerous. Does that get me put on the watch list? If you successfully create this universal spy network, the result will be the creation of a totalitarian ant pile. In the meantime, you will be creating the terrorists you are looking for, only once upon a time we called them patriots. --- Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 15:33:49 -0500 From: jeff <jeffat_private> Reply-To: jeffat_private Organization: newcity To: declanat_private Subject: Re: FC: Data miner replies to Politech, says TIA can ID terrorists I am happy to read the reasoned response below by Ben Brunk and Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro There are 2 issues outside of its scope: 1. TIA used for partisan purposes, such as investigating adulturous politicians of only one party, or to intimidate and track small environmental organisations who are opposing an oil well project owned by a close political ally of an authority. 2. a cash-only lifestyle.... if they're smart terrorists are stockpiling stuff now.... thus rendering a false sense of security and a maginot-line-mentality among authorities. 3. Industrial intelligence gathering... patterns may emerge from sifting through data that might benefit company X to know about the import/export/financial records of foreign supplier Y so that company X can push harder for a price reduction, etc.... this sort of info might be tempting for authorities to supply to politically connected businesses in return for lots of support. -Jeff C chicago --- To: declanat_private Cc: brunkbat_private Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 22:44:41 +0000 Subject: Re: FC: What's so bad about Total Information Awareness? by Ben Brunk What Mr. Brunk doesn't make explicit, but probably knows, is that TIA is simply an excuse to get their hands on every database in the world. The people who control the operation will simply look up what they want about whoever they have predetermined is suspect, according to their political agenda. --GJ --- From: Amos Satterlee <asatterleeat_private> To: "'declanat_private'" <declanat_private> Subject: RE: Data miner replies to Politech, says TIA can ID terrorists Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 17:18:38 -0500 Declan: Fascinating point/counterpoint. I think, however, that Brunk's point central concern is not addressed by Piatetsky-Shapiro, to wit: 1. Intelligent analysis of business behavior or buying patterns occurs within reasonably defineable contexts. TIA can't limit itself to a particular context because the terrorist then acts outside the context. 2. Piatetsky-Shapiro is correct that increasing the number of trials reduces the instance of false positives. Brunks point is that the terrorist acts in such a way to try and reduce the number of trials of a particular pattern of behavior. 3. If there is no context other than Everything, Brunk's point is that the time, effort, manpower, and invasiveness needed to analyze the data that intends to be unpatterned is so high as to be unacceptable and the unintended consequences are shocking. Amos --- Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 17:42:30 -0500 To: declanat_private From: Stephen Cobb <scobbat_private> Subject: Re: FC: What's so bad about Total Information Awareness? by Ben Brunk In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.0.20021209235549.0161eec0at_private> At 12/9/2002 11:57 PM -0500, you wrote: >Date: Mon, 09 Dec 2002 22:34:13 -0500 >From: Ben Brunk <brunkbat_private> >To: declanat_private >Subject: Debunking TIA > >My hope is that this editorial will awaken those who are even more skilled >in computer science, statistics, game theory, etc. and that they find the >courage to speak up so we can put the brakes on the wasteful and >destructive blind alley called TIA. > >Benjamin Brunk Back when Safire wrote his column on TIA my comment was "The reality is that no government agency could possibly link more than two databases in under ten years for just $200 million." (11/14/02) Maybe I should have said it louder, with more credentials :-) Stephen --- Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 19:45:49 -0500 From: "J.D. Abolins" <jda-irat_private> Subject: Re: FC: What's so bad about Total Information Awareness? by Ben Brunk In-reply-to: <5.1.1.6.0.20021209235549.0161eec0at_private> To: declanat_private On Mon, 2002-12-09 at 23:57, Declan McCullagh wrote: > Date: Mon, 09 Dec 2002 22:34:13 -0500 > From: Ben Brunk <brunkbat_private> > To: declanat_private > Subject: Debunking TIA > [...] > All in all, I can't see how TIA will do anything except harm innocent > people and create new jobs for bureaucrats. Any numerate person who spends > five minutes thinking about what is proposed will come to the same > conclusion. If our system is going to become this arbitrary, there are > going to be an awful lot of lives ruined in this country. Exactly so! If TIA works in linking patterns to some useful, the errors will be bad news. If TIA doesn't work to any useful anti-terrorism purposes, it will be bad. Whether or not a system like TIA works is not as critical as the belief by its users that it works. Recently, I got a good laugh from a Wall Street Journal article, "My TiVo Thinks I'm Gay, How to Set It Straight." The article described the grossly mistaken customer preferences generated by TiVo and Amazon.com routines. (Amazon.com's customer suggestions pegged a gay man as a "pregnant gay man" after he bought some books on pregenancy to give to a friend. What I'm not laughing about is the prospect that TIA thinks I'm a Middles Eastern terrorist if I bought some couscous and browsed some Middle Eastern Web sites. <grin> Then I'd have to buy some canned hams (which Iwouldn't eat but give to a soup kitchen) to adjust the profile. But it is likely that somebody with TIA development would try to catch TIA hacking attempts and peg eractic profile changes as suspicious. <grin and groan> In real life, however, I believe that likely government response to the occaisional rousting of innocent people, perhaps with soem rough treatment, is "They should thank us for being so diligent in following up possible terrorism leads instead of grumbling about the SWAT fellow's boot on the back of their necks." I hope to come to back to Mr. Burke's good comments about the complexities and difficulties of mining data in a latter email. Even though there are many problems, the perception (a shakey one) is still being sold as a great business tool. J.D. Abolins --- Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 22:33:11 -0500 To: declanat_private From: Stephen Cobb <scobbat_private> Subject: Re: FC: Data miner replies to Politech, says TIA can ID terrorists In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.0.20021210150041.021d9048at_private> I'm sorry but this is a laughable defense. Personally, I see a lot of technical problems with TIA long before you get to the statistics, but if TiVo is any indication of the technology involved, we are in deep trouble... "If TiVo Thinks You Are Gay, Here's How to Set It Straight What You Buy Affects Recommendations On Amazon.com, Too; Why the Cartoons? By JEFFREY ZASLOW Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1038261936872356908,00.html Basil Iwanyk is not a neo-Nazi. Lukas Karlsson isn't a shadowy stalker. David S. Cohen is not Korean. But all of them live with a machine that seems intent on giving them such labels. It's their TiVo, the digital videorecorder that records some programs it just assumes its owner will like, based on shows the viewer has chosen to record." Stephen ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ Recent CNET News.com articles: http://news.search.com/search?q=declan -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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