NSA Seeks Holy-Grail of Spy-Technology

[CuttingEdge100]

NSA Seeks Holy Grail of Spy Technology

The National Security Agency (NSA) is developing a tool that George Orwell’s Thought Police might have found useful: an artificial intelligence system designed*to gain insight into what people are thinking.

With the entire Internet and thousands of databases for a brain, the device will be able to respond almost instantaneously to complex questions posed by intelligence analysts. As more and more data is collected — through*phone calls, credit card receipts, social networks like Facebook and MySpace, GPS tracks, cell phone geolocation, Internet searches, Amazon book purchases, even E-Z Pass toll records — it may one day be possible to know*not just where people are and what they are doing, but what and how they*think.

The system is so potentially intrusive that at least one researcher has quit, citing concerns over the dangers in* placing such a powerful weapon in the hands of a top-secret agency with little accountability.

Getting Acquaint
Known as Aquaint, which stands for “Advanced QUestion Answering for INTelligence,” the project was run for*many years by John Prange, an NSA scientist at the Advanced Research and Development Activity. Headquartered in Room 12A69 in the NSA’s Research and Engineer ing Building at 1 National Business Park, ARDA was*set up by the agency to serve as a sort of intelligence community DARPA, the place where former Reagan*national security advisor John Poindexter’s infamous Total Information Awareness project was born. [Editor’s note:*TIA was a short-lived project founded in 2002 to apply information technology to counter terrorist and other threats*to national security.] Later named the Disruptive Technology Office, ARDA has now morphed into the Intelligence*Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA).

A sort of national laboratory for eavesdropping and other spycraft, IARPA will move into its new 120,000-square-foot home in 2009. The building will be part of the new M Square Research Park in College Park, Maryland. A mammoth two million-square-foot, 128-acre complex, it is operated in collaboration with the University of Maryland. “Their budget is classified, but I understand it’s very well funded,” said Brian Darmody, the*University of Maryland’s assistant vice president of research and economic development, referring to IARPA. “They’ll be in their own building here, and they’re*going to grow. Their mission is expanding.”

If IARPA is the spy world’s DARPA, Aquaint may be the reincarnation of Poindexter’s TIA. After a briefing by NSA Director Michael Hayden, Vice President Dick*Cheney, and CIA Director George Tenet of some of the NSA’s datamining programs in July 2003, Senator Jay Rockefeller IV, the vice chairman of the Senate*Intelligence Committee, wrote a concerned letter to Cheney. “As I reflected on the meeting today,” he said, “John Poindexter’s TIA project sprung to mind, exacerbating my concern regard ing the direction the administration is moving with regard to security, technology, and surveillance.”

Thought policeman

A supersmart search engine, capable of answering complex questions such as “What were the major issues in the last 10 presidential elections?” would be very*useful for the public. But that same capability in the hands of an agency like the NSA — absolutely secret, often above the law, resistant to oversight, and with*access to petabytes of private information about Americans — could be a privacy and civil liberties nightmare. “We must not forget that the ultimate goal is to* transfer research results into operational use,” said Aquaint project leader John Prange, in charge of information exploitation for*IARPA.

Once up and running, the database of old newspapers could quickly be expanded to include an inland sea of personal information scooped up by the agency’s*warrantless data suction hoses. Unregulated, they could ask it to determine which Americans might likely pose a security risk — or have sympathies toward a*particular cause, such as the antiwar movement, as was done during the 1960s and 1970s. The Aquaint robospy might then base its decision on the type of* books a person purchased online, or chat room talk, or websites visited — or a similar combination of data. Such a system would have an enormous chilling*effect on everyone’s everyday activities — what will the Aquaint computer think if I buy this book, or go to that website, or make this comment? Will I be suspected*of being a terrorist or a spy or a subversive?

I'd like to hear what people's opinions are regarding this particular issue.

Personally, I find it to be horrible that the government is developing A.I. for the purpose of gathering information on basically anything and everything in order to compile a list on a person, their personality, the causes they believe in, and even guesstimates on what they are thinking. And they're doing it with our taxpayer dollars! Essentially we're all paying money in order to fund a program that will eventually be used to spy on us all.

Yes, I know saying this will get me put on "The List"


CuttingEdge100 aka Helen

 

[Lindley]

The system is so potentially intrusive that at least one researcher has quit, citing concerns over the dangers in* placing such a powerful weapon in the hands of a top-secret agency with little accountability.

What the article says later in a portion you didn't quote:

The researcher now focuses on developing similar search techniques for the medical community.

Said person is still working on the exact same problem, they're just doing it with a different group. They have to know that if they're successful, the NSA will just use the medical results for their own project. Either something isn't getting communicated accurately in the article, or this person is an idiot.

It is a fascinating problem, though. Computer understanding of something as complex as the web is pretty much the holy grail of expert systems, which is about as close to true AI as we're likely to get this century.

It's also closely related to Tim Berners-Lee's original conception of the "Semantic Web", which eventually became (in more limited form) the World Wide Web we know today. Even the so-called "Web 2.0" content falls short of his original vision of the Semantic Web.

What you have to understand is that when they're making claims about understanding thoughts, they don't mean it literally. They simply mean that they're using a bunch of training data to build a generative model based on this collection of data, and then sampling from it to make predictions about what they might do. The accuracy of such a system can be impressive, or it can be awful, depending on how descriptive the training data is about the type of question they want to ask. It's like dropping a bunch of sand into a pile, and then asking where the next grain of sand is likely to land----probably in the center of the pile.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Lindley,

They have to know that if they're successful, the NSA will just use the medical results for their own project. Either something isn't getting communicated accurately in the article, or this person is an idiot.

That's actually a good point...

 

[tharpdevenport]

What you have to understand is that when they're making claims about understanding thoughts, they don't mean it literally.

Well, that's jsut part of the problem -- a government run agency who we have no control over is goings-ons, won't make that distinguishment, instead they'll start investigating you -- looking into your personal life, checking your banking and buying habits, reading your posts, reading your e-mail, listening to your phone calls, all until they are sure you're not a threat, then they'll keep a file on you chuck full of personal information.

 

[Lindley]

A computer will do all that, yes. That's what data mining is. Not a person---do you honestly think they have the manpower for that? The computer program will only flag those whom it considers sufficiently notable to be worthy of human study.

Now, I'm not claiming that's a good thing, but it hardly seems like the end of the world. And if the program is designed well enough that it avoids many false positives, then I don't really see the problem----it limits the scope of government investigation more closely to those who actually pose a threat.

The key here is that this doesn't give them any information which isn't already available. It's simply a means of analyzing that public information in such a way that useful patterns can be more readily extracted from the mass of useless data.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Tharpdevenport,

Well, that's jsut part of the problem -- a government run agency who we have no control over is goings-ons, won't make that distinguishment, instead they'll start investigating you -- looking into your personal life, checking your banking and buying habits, reading your posts, reading your e-mail, listening to your phone calls, all until they are sure you're not a threat, then they'll keep a file on you chuck full of personal information.

And their goal ultimately is to gather everything there is to know about everybody to the point that they could ultimately gain insights into even the way people think. Basically it would be like having a dossier on everybody with this extreme degree of detail. Of course they wouldn't necessarily want to look at everybody, but anybody they'd want to look at they could punch up their dossier and have such detailed insights that they could accurately determine what the person is thinking, how they will act and react to a given circumstances and even make predictions on what they will do.

It would be Big Brother to the extreme and not to mention, it would also be like Minority Report too in that with sufficient knowledge and intelligence one could extrapolate what a person will do next with an extraordinary degree of accuracy.

 

[GammaRay]

Is it just me or did anyone else think of Eagle Eye?

 

[CuttingEdge100]

GammaRay,

What's Eagle-Eye?

 

[Brandonv]

I couldn't find a link in the OP and after Googleing the headline, the only site I could find hosting the article is DarkGovernment.com. Is that a reputable site? No offense to the OP.

 

[STR]

Privacy was a limited-time luxury, enjoyed by the few generations that were alive between the time humanity left their ancestral small villages and the time humans built the tools to turn the modern megacity into something as manageable as the original village. Enjoy it while it lasts. I'm sure your grandchildren will think it's quaint and kinda cool.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

BrandonV,

I couldn't find a link in the OP and after Googleing the headline, the only site I could find hosting the article is DarkGovernment.com. Is that a reputable site? No offense to the OP.

Well some of the views espoused by the site itself is not, however of the news items (which include this item) which pertain to government developments are, in fact, accurate. Many other news items that were mentioned on this site, I've heard on other sources that were indeed reliable.


STR,

rivacy was a limited-time luxury, enjoyed by the few generations that were alive between the time humanity left their ancestral small villages and the time humans built the tools to turn the modern megacity into something as manageable as the original village. Enjoy it while it lasts. I'm sure your grandchildren will think it's quaint and kinda cool.

Do you really think it's good or even healthy for a society to exist where there is no privacy?


CuttingEdge100

 

[Lindley]

Some technical details on portions of the program are here:
http://www.informedia.cs.cmu.edu/aquaint/index.html
One of the professors on the co-project-lead list gave me a letter of recommendation for grad school, actually.

 

[Meredith]

I would like to encrpyt everything I ever transmit with "Marrisa stole the precious thing" over and over again.....

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Lindley,

If this thing can also handle video feeds and make sense of them, and if the government decided to start placing cameras everywhere and linked them up, every detail of everybody's life would be compiled.

Are you serious in telling me this is a good idea?

 

[Lindley]

I'm seriously telling you it's a fascinating and very difficult problem, and I'd be very interested to read the academic papers which will ultimately come out of it. If they can make it work----which, for any DARPA or IARPA program, is always a big IF, they go after the really tough ones----it has great potential in a variety of contexts.

Are some of those possible uses questionable? Absolutely. But avoiding the research doesn't work. The existing body of knowledge is what it is, and *someone* is going to push it to the next level sooner or later. Better we be in control of that process.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Lindley,

But avoiding the research doesn't work. The existing body of knowledge is what it is, and *someone* is going to push it to the next level sooner or later. Better we be in control of that process.

So, essentially you're saying because it exists, whether or not it's immoral, and even if it's not good for us, we should embrace it and develop it anyway?

C'mon this thing is designed to violate everybody's privacy and allow the government to know everything there is to know about everybody. This thing is the antithesis of what should be done in *any* free-society anywhere.


CuttingEdge100

 

[Lindley]

So, essentially you're saying because it exists, whether or not it's immoral, and even if it's not good for us, we should embrace it and develop it anyway?

Technology is NEVER immoral. It's simply the knowledge to know how to do something. When you look at an image, you can read any text in that image, and draw conclusions from any diagrams, pictures, or other structured content. Are your eyes thus immoral? If you're reading a book and part of the text is blurred out due to a misprint, can you make a pretty good guess about what it said? These are the tasks which they're trying to solve, nothing more.

C'mon this thing is designed to violate everybody's privacy and allow the government to know everything there is to know about everybody. This thing is the antithesis of what should be done in *any* free-society anywhere.

No, it's designed to achieve the technical requirements of the project. This will drive forward AI technology and pave the way for future innovations in the field. I'm not clear on specifically what the goal is here, but you can be sure that it's less impressive than you imagine. AI research always is.

The reason it's being funded is to help fight terrorism, which is a common denominator of most DARPA and IARPA projects these days. But the technology has potential far beyond that single use. Image understanding is key to robot navigation, for instance.

An unclassified DARPA program that I've been working on lately involves optical character recognition of handwritten Arabic. Our accuracy rate is lower than we'd prefer; a system capable of filling in the gaps in "errorfully extracted data" would be a great supplement on top of a system like ours.

And as I said before----it will not allow "the government" to know anything which they couldn't know now if they wanted to. It doesn't give them access to anything which isn't already public information. It will simply allow a computer to take on more of the grunt-work of sorting through terabytes of data, freeing up human analysts for more important tasks.

You ask what if the government deploys CCTV cameras all over. Well, guess what----there are *already* so many CCTV cameras in various places (restaurants, traffic lights, ATMs, etc) that it's impossible for humans to monitor all of that footage. A computer program capable of recognizing something unusual happening and highlighting it for human attention in real-time would be invaluable in fighting crime.

There are privacy concerns here, to be sure, but the correct response to those is not "stop developing technology". That's the Luddite view. We should rely on legislation and laws to limit that risk instead.

 

[coryweber1988]

I have to agree. There is nothing wrong with developing technology. Technology helps society on all levels if it is used properly. This can be said about all different aspects of science, from atomic energy to medical advancements.

 

[STR]

STR,
Do you really think it's good or even healthy for a society to exist where there is no privacy?

CuttingEdge100

You misinterpret, I made no value statement there. I actually enjoy my privacy, and think we're losing something precious. But we're going to lose it, it's an inevitability, and not because it will be government mandated, or even sanctioned. The government has rules and can be stopped by referendum, or by a simple polling. people suspect the government, watch the government. It will be the last entity to enjoy the fruits of this. No, we the civilian population, will trade our privacy for convenience, compensation, and safety. I only wonder if society will draw the line that keeps the monitoring outside our head, or they let it in. The technology will be there for gross violations of one's being at the speed of casualness. Random thoughts twittered for all of humanity to see. Thoughts stolen to keep petty crime away. Deepest desires dissected and analyzed to sell products.

Don't worry too much. Everyone else will be splayed open for all to see as well. It will at least be fair, democratic in a way unimaginable to the Greeks who coined "democracy" in the first place. And you'll have really nice stuff too.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Lindley,

Technology is NEVER immoral.

Science may be morally neutral but how that knowledge is applied is not morally neutral. Developing a device to allow a government to gather everything there is to know about everybody is not morally neutral, it's morally repugnant.


STR,

You misinterpret, I made no value statement there. I actually enjoy my privacy, and think we're losing something precious. But we're going to lose it, it's an inevitability

Even though something is inevitable doesn't mean we should embrace it and do everything to further it. We all will die, but that doesn't mean we should all commit suicide or something. I personally think death should be delayed and pushed off as much as reasonably possible.

Don't worry too much. Everyone else will be splayed open for all to see as well. It will at least be fair, democratic in a way unimaginable to the Greeks who coined "democracy" in the first place. And you'll have really nice stuff too.

Are you kidding me? The people who work at the NSA and those in power would be able to see everything about us, but they would sure as hell not let us see that information about them.