"Rolling back privacy protections for airport security", eh? What's that, Mr. Franklin?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5185-2002Jan31.html [Note 1: you *can* racially profile using neural nets because the nets learn categories --like culture-- from apparently benign inputs. This is why HNC has successes doing predictionsfor industries prohibited by law from using culture, race, etc.] [Note 2: HNC has a DoD background; look up Hecht-Neilson] [Note 3: Blacknet Partners Inc, a subsidiary of Reverse Panopticon Corp, hereby requests infoon "PROS Revenue Management, which has access to seating records of virtually every U.S. passenger", and "Acxiom Corp., one of the world's largest data-marketing companies"] By Robert O'Harrow Jr.Washington Post Staff WriterFriday, February 1, 2002; Page A01 Federal aviation authorities and technology companies will soon begin testing a vast air security screening system designed to instantly pull together every passenger's travel history and living arrangements, plus a wealth of other personal and demographic information. The government's plan is to establish a computer network linking every reservation system in the United States to private and government databases. The network would use data-mining and predictive software to profile passenger activity and intuit obscure clues about potential threats, even before the scheduled day of flight. <snip> "This is not fantasy stuff," said Joseph Del Balzo, a former acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration and a security consultant working on one of the profiling projects. "This technology, based on transaction analysis, behavior analysis, gives us a pretty good idea of what's going on in a person's mind." ... Government officials and companies also face questions about privacy. In interviews, more than a dozen people working on two parallel projects said they were taking pains to protect individual privacy. They intend to limit the personal information shared with airlines and security officials. But developers face restrictions on how much information they can use. Industry officials have already discussed with lawmakers the possible need to roll back some privacy protections in the Fair Credit Reporting Act and Driver's Privacy Protection Act to enable them to use more of the credit and driver's-license data. Civil liberties activists said they fear the system could be the beginnings of a surveillance infrastructure that will erode existing privacy protections. When told about the system, Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said it would be "a massive complex system of surveillance." "It really is a profound step for the government to be conducting background checks on a large percentage of Americans. We've never done that before," he said. "It's frightening." Some critics also worry that law enforcement authorities will be tempted to use it for broader aims, such as snaring deadbeat parents or profiling for drug couriers. "If you can profile for terrorists, you can profile for other things," said Richard M. Smith, an independent computer security and privacy specialist. "The computer technology is so cheap and getting so much cheaper, you just have to be careful: Turn up the volume a little bit, and we just use the air transportation system to catch everybody."... The systems under development would include a thousand or more minute details and computer-derived conclusions about a person's travel, daily activity over time and whether he or she has coordinated activity with other passengers, possibly on other flights, according to the groups developing the systems. Two leading prototypes are being developed. One group is led by HNC Software, a risk-detection specialist that works for credit card issuers, telephone companies, insurers and others. HNC is working with several companies, including PROS Revenue Management, which has access to seating records of virtually every U.S. passenger, and Acxiom Corp., one of the world's largest data-marketing companies, which collects such information as land records, car ownership, projected income, magazine subscriptions and telephone numbers. Officials at both HNC and Accenture said they take care with the personal information their systems collect and parse. The HNC prototype, for instance, does not link a passenger's personal information to a passenger's threat index. Officials also pledged that there will be no racial profiling, in part because ethnicity often has no bearing on potential risk. The HNC prototype uses software known as neural networks, which can "learn" subtle patterns and relationships by processing millions of records, to predict when a particular transaction is likely to be fraudulent. The company already uses neural networks software to accurately profile the activity of millions of credit card owners, telephone callers and people receiving insurance benefits to crack down on fraud. The Accenture system also creates a threat index, using massive computing power and relational database software. It examines travel data to look for things such as routes involving odd destinations or flying patterns. To search for threads linking individuals, the system will sift huge amounts of travel records, real estate histories and "seven layers" of passenger associates, according to Accenture partner Brett Ogilvie. For instance, it would note if an individual lived at the former address of someone considered high-risk. Theoretically, the system could be calibrated to watch for people with links to restaurants or other places thought to be favored by terrorist cells. It might also note phone calls and match individuals against government watch lists. A potential link to a threatening character or region could boost a passenger's score, he said .... Paul Werbos, a senior National Science Foundation official and a neural networks specialist, said such systems need to be used carefully. While there is no doubt that profiling can improve security, Werbos said, "we have to be very careful not to create punishments, disincentives, for being different from average."