Nat'l Research Council report on data mining report: it doesn't work

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Peter Swire <peter () peterswire net>
Date: October 8, 2008 2:45:24 PM EDT
To: "dave () farber net" <dave () farber net>
Subject: RE: [IP] Nat'l Research Council report on data mining report:  
it doesn't work

Dave:

I did not participate in writing the report, but attended the roll-out  
event yesterday and have read through most of it.

I really commend this report to your readers.  It does high quality  
work on data mining and behavioral surveillance.

A particularly strong aspect of the report is a detailed and usable  
"framework for program assessment."  This essentially takes the  
Privacy Impact Assessment required by the E-Gov Act of 2002 and  
deepens the process considerably.  Although designed specifically for  
assessment of federal programs, the step-by-step framework would be  
easily usable in private-sector, state, and local programs.

One noteworthy point in the report is that compliance with the "law"  
is not enough (in part because the laws lag behind technical  
developments).  Too often officials defend a bad program by saying "it  
complies with all laws."  Program assessment also must look at  
upholding "values," and the framework sets out a step-by-step way to  
do that.

Along with the committee members mentioned, your readers should know  
that the lead drafter of the report (who was presented as such at the  
event yesterday) was Fred Cate of Indiana University.

I think this is the best single document I have seen for how privacy  
issues should be addressed in the federal government going forward.

Peter

Prof. Peter P. Swire
C. William O'Neil Professor of Law
  Moritz College of Law
  The Ohio State University
Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress
(240) 994-4142, www.peterswire.net


-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2008 1:34 PM
To: ip
Subject: [IP] Nat'l Research Council report on data mining report: it  
doesn't work




http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10059987-38.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20


October 7, 2008 9:30 AM PDT
Government report: Data mining doesn't work well
Posted by Declan McCullagh

The most extensive government report to date on whether terrorists can
be identified through data mining has yielded an important conclusion:
It doesn't really work.

A National Research Council report, years in the making and scheduled
to be released Tuesday, concludes that automated identification of
terrorists through data mining or any other mechanism "is neither
feasible as an objective nor desirable as a goal of technology
development efforts." Inevitable false positives will result in
"ordinary, law-abiding citizens and businesses" being incorrectly
flagged as suspects.

The whopping 352-page report, called "Protecting Individual Privacy in
the Struggle Against Terrorists," amounts to at least a partial
repudiation of the Defense Department's controversial data-mining
program called Total Information Awareness, which was limited by
Congress in 2003.

But the ambition of the report's authors is far broader than just
revisiting the problems of the TIA program and its successors.
Instead, they aim to produce a scholarly evaluation of the current
technologies that exist for data mining, their effectiveness, and how
government agencies should use them to limit false positives--of the
sort that can result in situations like heavily-armed SWAT teams
raiding someone's home and shooting their dogs based on the false
belief that they were part of a drug ring.

The report was written by a committee whose members include William
Perry, a professor at Stanford University; Charles Vest, the former
president of MIT; W. Earl Boebert, a retired senior scientist at
Sandia National Laboratories; Cynthia Dwork of Microsoft Research; R.
Gil Kerlikowske, Seattle's police chief; and Daryl Pregibon, a
research scientist at Google.
<snip>


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