Tech That Protects The President, Part 1: Data Mining by Alex Popescu.
From the post:
President Obama’s appearance at the Democratic National Convention in September took place amid a rat’s nest of perils. But the local Charlotte, North Carolina, police weren’t entirely on their own. They were aided by a sophisticated data mining system that helped them identify threats and react to them quickly. (Part 1 of a 3-part series about the technology behind presidential security.)
The Charlotte-Mecklenberg police used a software from lxReveal to monitor the Internet for associations between Obama, the DNC, and potential treats. The company’s program, known as uReveal, combs news articles, status updates, blog posts, discussion forum comments. But it doesn’t simply search for keywords. It works on concepts defined by the user and uses natural language processing to analyze plain English based on meaning and context, taking into account slang and sentiment. If it detects something amiss, the system sends real-time alerts.
“We are able to read and alert almost as fast as [information] comes on the Web, as opposed to other systems where it takes hours,” said Bickford, vice president of operations of IxReveal.
In the past, this kind of task would have required large numbers of people searching and then reading huge volumes of information and manually highlighting relevant references. “Normally you have to take information like an email and shove it in to a database,” Bickford explained. “Someone has to physically read it or do a keyword search.
uReveal, on the other hand, lets machines do the reading, tracking, and analysis. “If you apply our patented technology and natural language processing capability, you can actually monitor that information for specific keywords and phrases based on meaning and context,” he says. The software can differentiate between a Volkswagen bug, a computer bug and an insect bug, Bickford explained – or, more to the point, between a reference to fire from a gun barrel and on to fire in a fireplace.
Bickford says the days of people slaving over sifting through piles of data, or ETL (extract, transform and load) data processing capabilities are over. “It’s just not supportable.”
I understand product promotion but do you think potential assassins are publishing letters to the editor, blogging or tweeting about their plans or operational details?
Granting contract killers in Georgia are caught when someone tries to hire an undercover police officer as a “hit” man.
Does that expectation of dumbness apply in other cases as well?
Or, is searching large amounts of data like the drunk looking for his keys under the street light?
A case of “the light is better here?”