The Homeland Security Department scrapped an ambitious anti-terrorism data-mining tool after investigators found it was tested with information about real people without required privacy safeguards.
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The department has spent $42 million since 2003 developing the software tool known as ADVISE, the Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement program, at the Lawrence Livermore and Pacific Northwest national laboratories. It was intended for wide use, including immigration, customs, border protection, biological defense and the DHS intelligence office. 数据挖掘论坛
Pilot tests of the program were quietly suspended in March after Congress' Government Accountability Office warned that "the ADVISE tool could misidentify or erroneously associate an individual with undesirable activity such as fraud, crime or terrorism." 数据挖掘论坛
Since then, Homeland Security's inspector general and the DHS privacy office discovered that tests used live data about real people rather than made-up data for one to two years without meeting privacy requirements. DHS spokesman Russ Knocke said, "ADVISE is not expected to be restarted." 数据挖掘实验室
The House Judiciary Committee began tackling legislation Wednesday that temporarily gives the Bush administration expanded authority to eavesdrop on international telephone calls and e-mails of Americans without a warrant. At issue is legislation that Congress passed in haste just before the August recess without public hearings. The White House pushed the measure, saying it would help thwart an impending terrorist attack. Administration officials said it would also close loopholes in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires spy agencies to obtain a warrant from a secret court before they can conduct surveillance on suspected terrorists or spies in America.
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A much-touted, high-tech system being tested along the southern frontier with Mexico failed to meet expectations and is being reworked, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said. He said that SBInet, which integrates cameras, radar and unmanned aerial vehicles to monitor the border, did not satisfy his department during initial tests and that he has asked Boeing, the contractor, to make improvements. 数据挖掘工具
