Sunday, March 19, 2006
Why Data Mining Won't Stop Terror
Bruce Schneier of Counterpane wrote in Wired Why Data Mining Won't Stop Terror. "We're not trading privacy for security; we're giving up privacy and getting no security in return." Read the article you'll understand the numbers. The issue is, the system must be impossibly accurate or it will drown in a sea of false positives which still need to be tracked down and prevent agents from doing things that might actually improve security.
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I agree with the article and the case it makes....as well as for another reason. Mining for credit card fraud....you have 100% of the data points.
Data mining for terror....you don't have all the data points. Yes I suppose you could have phone call data...and airline flight history. But it is not realistic to think you can compose a SQL statement like: select * from people where (called.Osama == true ) && (tookflyinglessons == true) || (purchasedUranium == true)
Even Isaac Asimov's science fiction version of datamining to predict the future from his Foundation Series...called psychohistory...could only do so on a macro scale.
Law enforcement probably needs better and more connected information systems....but data mining is probably not the right application.
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