{"id":27,"date":"2012-01-30T07:52:35","date_gmt":"2012-01-30T07:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/thefetterblog\/?p=27"},"modified":"2012-01-30T07:52:35","modified_gmt":"2012-01-30T07:52:35","slug":"date-mining-in-a-haystack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/thefetterblog\/2012\/01\/30\/date-mining-in-a-haystack\/","title":{"rendered":"Date Mining in a Haystack"},"content":{"rendered":"

Data mining is the process of collecting vast amounts of information about people, generally from the internet, and using that information for some purpose. The most commonly known uses are credit card companies using the process to identify stolen cards. Many online companies data mine as well, using the gathered information to target ads to people depending on their tastes. Both of these uses seem rather handy, although the ad targeting can get annoying at times. However, not all data mining is so friendly. the department of\u00a0defense\u00a0of the U.S.\u00a0government\u00a0uses data mining to identify possible\u00a0terrorist\u00a0threats. In a article on Wired<\/a>, Bruce Schneier\u00a0points out how\u00a0ineffective\u00a0the process is and how much of our privacy is lost for so little gain. Schneier’s point is that because of the complexity of attributes that lead to terrorist attacks, no data mining system would be able to\u00a0accurately\u00a0predict any attacks in the\u00a0foreseeable\u00a0future\u00a0– reasonable if one thinks of the internet as a haystack and the key information as a needle, broken into\u00a0pieces\u00a0and thrown in. This means the citizens of the U.S. are essentially being watched by their own country for no security gain. This was proven by the NSA’s eavesdropping program: it gave thousands of tips per month, which were followed up by the FBI and each one was a dead end, costing thousands of man hours which could have been spent actually making the country safer. Schneier is not totally against date mining: he supports the uses by credit companies to fight fraud, by sites like Amazon and\u00a0Google\u00a0for showing him\u00a0things\u00a0he might buy, all because there is a obvious gain for the loss of privacy.<\/p>\n

Personally, I agree with Schneier on data mining. If the uses it is being put to work, like the credit card and online shopping, and I\u00a0benefit\u00a0from it then I support it. But the current projects attempting to protect us do sound to much like a Big Brother\u00a0government\u00a0in the making. As the system currently just tells the\u00a0government\u00a0everything I do on the internet but fails to catch any terrorists, and very few other criminals, I do feel it is logical to keep using it. If it worked, if this system had stopped one terrorist attack, I would feel better about its\u00a0continued\u00a0activities, but seeing how it has not managed that, I feel that it is not worth the lose in privacy. Security Data Mining on such a large and random scale as\u00a0terrorism\u00a0needs serious work, and until it can actually\u00a0effectively\u00a0work and protect us, I don’t feel like\u00a0sacrificing\u00a0my privacy, on principle. It really comes down to Ben Franklin’s paraphrased quote:\u00a0He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither. And giving up privacy is to close the freedom for me.<\/p>\n

Bruce Schneier is a\u00a0cryptographer, computer security\u00a0specialist\u00a0and writer. He maintains generally liberal views on cyber security and disclosure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Data mining is the process of collecting vast amounts of information about people, generally from the internet, and using that information for some purpose. The most commonly known uses are credit card companies using the process to identify stolen cards. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","kk_blocks_editor_width":"","_kiokenblocks_attr":"","_kiokenblocks_dimensions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"gutentor_comment":0,"qubely_featured_image_url":null,"qubely_author":{"display_name":"sfetter","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/thefetterblog\/author\/sfetter\/"},"qubely_comment":0,"qubely_category":"Uncategorized<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"Data mining is the process of collecting vast amounts of information about people, generally from the internet, and using that information for some purpose. The most commonly known uses are credit card companies using the process to identify stolen cards. … Continue reading →","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/thefetterblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/thefetterblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/thefetterblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/thefetterblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/thefetterblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/thefetterblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/thefetterblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions\/28"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/thefetterblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/thefetterblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/thefetterblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}