A major study lambasts the US government’s reliance on
data mining to detect terrorists as “a waste of
resources”.
Since 9/11 the US government has been analysing people’s travel,
spending and communications habits, hoping to spot patterns of
abnormal behaviour that could lead it to terrorists.
But in its paper, “Effective Counter-Terrorism and the Limited
Role of Predictive Data Mining”, public policy research foundation
the Cato Institute argues that data mining creates a false positive
rate of 90%. Worse still, while the data capture methods are easily
avoided by real terrorists, it violates citizens’ privacy and civil
liberties.
“The absence of terrorism patterns means that it would be
impossible to develop useful algorithms,” points out the
report.
“The corresponding statistical likelihood of false positives is
so high that predictive data mining will inevitably waste resources
and threaten civil liberties.”
Rather than data mining, the report’s authors conclude that more
traditional information sharing and investigatory legwork are the
answer to curbing the terrorist threat.
Comment on this article:
computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk