Information Security Management The Implicit Need for Privacy Requirements or How Ignoring Privacy Can Kill Your Program

Background DARPA funds “high risk/high reward” research for the DoD and Intelligence Community (IC) Basic and applied research, but always with the DoD/IC application in mind; may be classified Look for 2 order of magnitude improvement in something Examples of major successes:  Arpanet became the prototype for the Internet  The mouse  Aircraft stealth technology  High performance computing (Thinking Machines, TERA)  Decision Support Systems

Total Information Awareness (TIA) Goal: tools to generate and “connect the dots” A suite of programs including  Language transcription, translation, interpretation, “metadata” creation, “gisting”  Human ID at a distance  Collaborative analysis tools for teams of diverse experts with supporting, interactive search and data analysis  Data mining and link analysis: mining, graphical representation, relationship extraction, link discovery, pattern learning (GENOA project)

Data mining and link analysis ‘The project calls for the development of "revolutionary technology for ultra-large all-source information repositories,” which would contain information from multiple sources to create a "virtual, centralized, grand database." This database would be populated by transaction data contained in current databases such as financial records, medical records, communication records, and travel records as well as new sources of information. Also fed into the database would be intelligence data.’ ---Electronic Privacy Information Center (

Timeline: Getting Started Announced in March 2002 in a “Broad Area Announcement” Several components already under development in earlier DARPA programs. New contracts awarded in Spring Project described to the public at DARPATECH in summer 2002 by Program Director John Poindexter.  “Investigating Privacy Technology”  No further description of privacy approach in the talk or on the DARPA web site.

Timeline: The Controversy Nov 9, 2002, questions of privacy in TIA are raised in the press:  “If deployed, civil libertarians argue, the computer system would rapidly bring a surveillance state. They assert that potential terrorists would soon learn how to avoid detection in any case.” (NY Times) Nov 21, 2002, former Nixon speech writer William Safire writes an Op-Ed piece about TIA with the title “You Are a Suspect” Nov-Dec 2002: more questions raised in congress, the press. Defensive comments from DARPA, Rumsfeld, etc., but no discussion of how to enforce privacy. Description of TIA, program managers names/contact information removed from public DARPA web site

Timeline: Response Spring 2002 Jan, 2002: DARPA signs contract with PARC (formerly Xerox PARC) to look into privacy technology. US congress votes to limit TIA funding pending a report to congress on what they are doing and how privacy would be preserved. DARPA changes program name to Terrorist Information Awareness, and claims they will only use data about non-US citizens Tony Tether, head of DARPA, presents report defending TIA privacy to congress. General Accounting Office report questions privacy in TIA. Congress cuts all funding for TIA.

The TIA Privacy Concern Virtual database of information from numerous government (unclassified and classified), corporate, and public databases Data objects may contain identifying information about individuals, organizations, etc. (entities) Analysts and “bots” need to search database for “interesting” links Many analysts and others in law enforcement need to search database for information about specific entities Entity identity may be protected by complex law and policy rules until there is a strong indication of improper actions Privacy rules may vary based on the source of the data (foreign, domestic), the entity (US citizen), and the type of data Protection is needed against both internal abuses and external threats

Is TIA dead? Some states use MATRIX, a commercial product using commercially available data  Many who signed up originally have dropped out due to privacy concerns, including NY (liberal) and Utah (very conservative) CIA and FBI use NORA (Non Obvious Relationship Analysis), originally developed for use by Las Vegas casinos to identify gamblers with potential mob connections. An “annonymizing” version, ANNA, is being developed. Issue: what data are they using? Much of the data used by TIA is in commercial databases, available for use for a fee. ChoicePoint (among others) sells a service to aggregate information about an individual for a fee.