Mass deduction;
Intelligent software might scan databases for hints of terrorist attacks in the making
Suppose a foreign national from a Middle Eastern country known to host terrorists earns a hazardous-materials trucking license, then gets a gun permit and buys firearms. That pattern might not have attracted much attention before September 11. But these days, powerful government computers that scan public and private databases would spot these worrisome activities. Right?
Far from it. The government's expanded electronic surveillance powers are adding to the mountains of data already collected by federal agencies and state and local governments. But "connecting the disparate fragments of information to identify a pattern is . . . something the government can't do yet," says Ruth David, a former deputy director for science and technology at the Central Intelligence Agency. Private industry, however, thinks it can, with "artificial intelligence" software originally developed for such uses as investment portfolio management.
Patterns. Everyone agrees that detecting terrorist activity is much harder, and privacy experts are wary of expanded surveillance. But the government is eagerly auditioning these weapons of mass deduction. At the end of October, the Defense Department asked for proposals for dozens of antiterrorism technologies, including computer tools for pattern recognition.
One company already in discussions with the government is Applied Systems Intelligence in Roswell, Ga., which has developed a pattern-recognition system called KARNAC. Partly based on software used to control pilotless aircraft, KARNAC can be programmed with likely terrorist characteristics, then let loose to scan databases for clues to an attack. Another software developer, Verilytics of Burlington, Mass., thinks it has a potential terrorism fighter in its neural network system, currently used in financial programs. The software can learn from experience, fine-tuning its ability to recognize relevant market news--or signs of a terrorist threat.
Any technology is going to be plagued by false leads, says David Jensen, director of the Knowledge Discovery Laboratory at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. What's more, searching unstructured collections of E-mail and news reports for clues is "a very hard thing to do, but not impossible," says Jensen. And, as Ruth David notes, cybersleuths can only be as imaginative as their programmers about the forms future terrorism might take.
This story appears in the December 17, 2001 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.