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> The rush to accumulate enormous amounts of
> information also increases the risk of a significant number of false  
> leads
> that could implicate innocent people.

Oh my, I had never thought of that!
And all these years we guys have spent our times working on tools that  
are not just useless but even bad for innocent people!
Why didn't they warn us before ?!!

Fortunately facebook has come right on time to give us another reason  
to carry on our gibberish...

--	Christophe.



Le 8 oct. 08 à 20:31, Barry Wellman a écrit :

> *****  To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org  *****
>
> Study of Data Mining for Terrorists Is Urged
> New York Times (10/08/08) P. A20; Lichtblau, Eric
>
> All U.S. government programs that use data-mining technology to search
> through databases to find clues on terrorist activities should be
> evaluated to determine if they are effective or even legal,  
> concludes a
> new National Research Council (NRC) report.  The U.S. government has  
> been
> aggressively using data-mining tools since the Sept. 11 attacks, as
> counter-terrorism officials in many intelligence agencies have  
> sought to
> analyze records on travel habits, calling patterns, email, financial
> transactions, and other data to isolate possible terrorist  
> activity.  The
> National Security Agency's practice of wiretapping terror suspects  
> without
> warrants, screening suspicious airline passengers, and the Pentagon's
> now-defunct Total Information Awareness program all have relied on  
> data
> mining.  The NRC report warns that successfully using these tools to  
> deter
> terrorism will be extremely difficult due to legal, technological, and
> logistical problems.  The report says a haphazard approach to using
> data-mining tools threatens both Americans' privacy rights and the
> country's legitimate national security needs.  Data mining has been  
> shown
> to work in commercial settings to predict product trends and detect  
> credit
> fraud, but there is little evidence to confirm that data mining can be
> used to find terrorists, the report says.  Part of the problem is  
> that the
> sample of known terrorists and actual attacks is so small that it is
> difficult to establish a pattern of suspicious behavior that can be  
> used
> to find other terrorists.  The rush to accumulate enormous amounts of
> information also increases the risk of a significant number of false  
> leads
> that could implicate innocent people.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/washington/08data.html
>
>
>
> Barry Wellman
> _______________________________________________________________________
>
>  S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC              NetLab Director
>  Department of Sociology                        University of Toronto
>  725 Spadina Avenue, Room 388                  Toronto Canada M5S 2J4
>  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman            fax:+1-416-978-3963
>
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>
> _______________________________________________________________________
>
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