US suspends vast ADVISE data-sifting system

US suspends vast ADVISE data-sifting system

www.csmonitor.com

From late 2004 until mid-2006, a little-known data-mining computer system developed by the US Department of Homeland Security to hunt terrorists, weapons of mass destruction, and biological weapons sifted through Americans' personal data with little regard for federal privacy laws.

But ADVISE (Analy­sis, Dissemina­tion, Visu­ali­zation, Insight and Semantic Enhance­ment) was special. An electronic omnivore conceived in 2003, it was designed to ingest information from scores of databases, blogs, e-mail traffic, intelligence reports, and other sources, government documents and researchers say.

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Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
US Govs Anti-Terror Database to Shutdown

Well this is good news I think ;-P (unless it could somehow, somewhere have protected against terrorists).

Also the TALON system was also shut down last week.

In 2003, the Total Awareness Project was shut down too over privacy fears.

www.csmonitor.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I'm guessing they've got a newer toy to play with. Something better that's uber top secret. The Powers That Be will not let go of something so useful to their cause so easily.

Of course, that's two of maybe 50.

Seriously, I think they threw some unnecessary ones to the wolves to see how people would react. I know of a number of data miners that are running now, and you won't be hearing about them on the news.

What's funny is the weird-arsed arrangement. Here you have a group who I could sort of believe might need that sort of info. But their 'boss' has an intelligence agency. So I don't know why they don't get THEM to do it.

Worse, the group is comprised of semi-independent sub-groups, and each one of the sub-groups had to have their own separate data mining operation.

Why you couldn't have your own dedicated spook group have one nice one and share, I don't know.

Originally posted by Beachcoma
I'm guessing they've got a newer toy to play with. Something better that's uber top secret.

I kind of think this is probably the case. The is so much data mining going on now I kind of find it hard to believe that all of the government security projects are shut down. I hope any information they get will be used to stop the terrorists.

Ah, it makes more sense now.

I was reminded that the ones I was speaking of aren't being run BY the government. They're contracted out. So it's not the same as the gubmint doing it. At least that's the line they're tapdancing down.

Now, the guys from the local chapter of the group I was discussing report to work at this facility as "liaison", and they're in and out all day, and the entire product of the facility is delivered to this one gubmint customer and it's classified up the wazoo, but in legalese truth it's owned and operated by a private corporation FOR the gubmint. So it's ok.