... The $42 million cutting-edge [ADVISE] system, designed to process trillions of pieces of data, has been halted and could be canceled pending data-privacy reviews, according to a newly released report to Congress by the DHS’s own internal watchdog.
Data mining to help fight the war on terror has become an accepted, even mandated, method to provide timely security information. The DHS operates at least a dozen such programs; intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense employ many others.
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...
Unknown to the privacy office, the ADVISE pilot programs had been operational and using personal data for about 18 months before the privacy office made that report to Congress, the OIG found.
You might want to read Lambert's whole post.
This was doubtless halted until it could be handed over, in entirety, At&T/ Verizon contracts and all, to be administered by the Pentagon/ DIA, and completely classifed and black budgeted.
After all, NSA Director and Vice Admiral Mike McConnell has a couple of telcom ties he'd rather judiciously exploit in his own little version of the game, too.
“Ya don’t think they’re really spending a million dollars on a hammer, do ya?”
Well, yes I do, it’s just a question on who’s the nail.
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