Is Facebook's “facial recognition”
tool superior to that being developed by the FBI?
Facial-recognition
tech played no role in ID'ing bomb suspects
… Despite several images of
Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev from the scene of the deadly bombings
and the existence of images of the brothers in official government
databases, facial-recognition software was unable to put names to
their faces, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis told the
Washington
Post in an interview published Saturday. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has a
Massachusetts driver's license, while Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder
brother who died Friday after a shootout with police, had been the
subject of an FBI investigation, the Post noted.
… The FBI is expected to develop a
facial-recognition system next year for police agencies in the
western United States, Western Identification Network CEO Ken
Bischoff told the Mercury News.
(Related) But failure never stopped
those looking for larger budgets.
Joe Cadillic, a frequent submitter to
this blog and a private investigator in Massachusetts, expresses his
concerns in a blog post:
Surveillance
cameras — which have proliferated in London, Chicago and elsewhere
— may take on new allure. Informal surveillance by private
citizens may proliferate as well; the FBI says it expects the public
to be its “eyes and ears” as the investigation continues.
The upside of this
expanding surveillance network is clear — a greater potential for
law enforcement to solve crimes and, in some instances, to prevent
them. David Antar of New York-based IPVideo Corporation says video
surveillance can be set up to trigger warnings if bags are left
unattended or suspicious activity takes place before or during a
large-scale event.
Read more on MassPrivateI
Can events in Boston be used to justify
expanded public surveillance? They have that potential as people
tend to use incidents to support their political agenda. And there
is the point of no serious expectation of privacy in public spaces
anyway. But what some – like Representative Pete King – are
talking about goes beyond that. Joe writes:
Peter King sees
the attacks in Massachusetts this week as a wake-up call to local
law-enforcement authorities to increase their surveillance and
awareness of potential terrorists.
“Police have to
be in the community, they have to build up as many sources as they
can, and they have to realize that the threat is coming from the
Muslim community and increase surveillance there,” the New York
Republican congressman tells National Review.
Boston already has a fusion center.
Did the FBI ever share the info they received from Russia about the
older brother in 2011? If so, what happened? Is this a case –
like we saw after 9/11 – that the FBI potentially could have
recognized a threat and dealt with it before the acts of terrorism?
If so, that doesn’t argue for more surveillance but for better
analysis and follow-up of intel the government already gets.
Those yelling their heads off for more
surveillance also need to remember that they are also talking about
domestic surveillance of U.S. citizens. Identifying people by their
religion does not strip them of their rights as Americans – or
shouldn’t. I personally find Rep. King’s statements as offensive
as the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program. Claiming to protect national
security by marginalizing huge swaths of our population just doesn’t
cut it for me.
“We know who you are. We know where
you live. We know where your children go to school. Now buy our
product or suffer the consequences.” New Jersey Marketing
April 21, 2013
Pew
- The State of Digital Marketing in the Networked Age
The
State of Digital Marketing in the Networked Age, by Lee Rainie,
April 19, 2013 - at Mid-Atlantic Marketing Summit
- "Pew Interent Director Lee Rainie [discussed] the Project’s latest research into internet trends, mobile connectivity, and use of social media and what they mean for marketers. He will also look[ed] ahead at some of the big questions about the next stages of technology."
“Rah, rah us!” Cyber attacks lead,
but with a more rational assessment (no mention of a “Cyber Pearl
Harbor”)
April 21, 2013
Worldwide
Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community
Worldwide
Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community. James R.
Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, April 18, 2013
- "This year, in both content and organization, this statement illustrates how quickly and radically the world—and our threat environment—are changing. This environment is demanding reevaluations of the way we do business, expanding our analytic envelope, and altering the vocabulary of intelligence. Threats are more diverse, interconnected, and viral than at any time in history. Attacks, which might involve cyber and financial weapons, can be deniable and unattributable. Destruction can be invisible, [??? Bob] latent, and progressive. We now monitor shifts in human geography, climate, disease, and competition for natural resources because they fuel tensions and conflicts. Local events that might seem irrelevant are more likely to affect US national security in accelerated time frames. In this threat environment, the importance and urgency of intelligence integration cannot be overstated. Our progress cannot stop. The Intelligence Community must continue to promote collaboration among experts in every field, from the political and social sciences to natural sciences, medicine, military issues, and space. Collectors and analysts need vision across disciplines to understand how and why developments—and both state and unaffiliated actors—can spark sudden changes with international implications."
(Related) Makes me wonder how
different this “outlook” is from the 'wisdom of the CIA' if they
produced it and only asked outsiders to “review” their work.
April 21, 2013
The
National Intelligence Council's Global Trends Report
"The
National Intelligence Council's (NIC) Global Trends Report
engages expertise from outside government on factors of such as
globalization, demography and the environment, producing a
forward-looking document to aid policymakers in their long term
planning on key issues of worldwide importance... Global
Trends 2030 is intended to stimulate thinking about the rapid and
vast geopolitical changes characterizing the world today and possible
global trajectories over the next 15 years. As with the NIC’s
previous Global Trends reports, we do not seek to predict the
future—which would be an impossible feat—but instead provide a
framework for thinking about possible futures and their implications.
In-depth research, detailed modeling and a variety of analytical
tools drawn from public, private and academic sources were employed
in the production of Global
Trends 2030. NIC leadership engaged with experts in nearly
20 countries—from think tanks, banks, government offices and
business groups—to solicit reviews of the report."
How we intrude... Tools &
Techniques (and a few new project names)
April 21, 2013
Federal
Agency Data Mining Report 2012
Office of the Director of National
Intelligence, 2012
Data Mining Report For the Period January 1, 2012 through December
31, 2012: "The Office of the Director of National
Intelligence (ODNI) provides this report pursuant to Section 804 of
the Implementing the Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of
2007, entitled The Federal Agency Data Mining Reporting Act of 2007
(Act)."
[From the report:
… The objective of the KDD program
is to enable an analyst to utilize large, complex and varied data
sets that he has not seen before to produce actionable intelligence
in a timely manner. [Digital data analysis tool
Bob]
… The objective of the ALADDIN
program is to enable an analyst to query large video data sets to
quickly and reliably locate those video clips that show a specific
type of event. [Find me a bomber? Bob]
… The APP
program [ … ] developed secure distributed private
information retrieval (PIR) protocols that permit an entity (Client)
to query a cooperating data provider (Server) and retrieve only the
records that match the query without the Server
learning what query was posed or what results were returned. [Data
stealing too Bob]
The SPAR program was launched in 2011
to build on the successes of APP and explore additional applications
of PIR to realistic IC scenarios.
This seems relatively insane to me...
"Cryptographers on
StackExchange were discussing CipherCloud,
using
some promotional material from the same to provide detail.
CipherCloud responded with a DMCA
takedown request that some have characterized
as abusive."
Where “Big Data” come from. An
Infographic.
Information
Revolution: Big Data Has Arrived at an Almost Unimaginable Scale
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