[privacy] DHS Ends Criticized Data-Mining Program

["Richard M. Smith" <rms () computerbytesman com>]

http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/D/DHS_DATA_MINING?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HO
ME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- 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.

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 by DHS
components, including immigration, customs, border protection, biological
defense and its intelligence office.

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."

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. The
inspector general also said ADVISE was poorly planned, time-consuming for
analysts to use and lacked adequate justifications.

DHS spokesman Russ Knocke told The Associated Press on Wednesday the project
was being dropped.

"ADVISE is not expected to be restarted," Knocke said. DHS' Science and
Technology directorate "determined that new commercial products now offer
similar functionality while costing significantly less to maintain than
ADVISE."

Earlier, DHS said testing would resume once appropriate privacy analyses and
public notices were completed.

...

DHS inspector general report:

http://www.dhs.gov/xoig/assets/mgmtrpts/OIG-07-56-Jun07.pdf   

DHS privacy office report:

http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/privacy/privacy-rpt-advise.pdf   


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