NIST developing database to help advance forensics by Greg Otto.
From the post:
While the National Institute of Standards and Technology has been spending a lot of time advancing the technology behind forensics, the agency can so only go so far. With all of the ways people can be identified, researchers still lack sufficient data that would allow them to further already existing technology.
To overcome that burden, NIST has been working on a catalog that would help the agency, academics and other interested parties discover data sets that will allow researchers to further their work. The Biometric and Forensic Research Database Catalog aims to be a one-stop shop for those looking to gather enough data or find better quality data for their projects.
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Not all national agencies in the United States do a bad job. Some of them, NIST being among them, do very good jobs.
Take the Biometric and Forensic Research Database Catalog (BDbC) for example. Forensic data is hard to find and to cure that problem, NIST has created a curated data collection that is available for anyone to search online.
Perhaps the U.S. Axis of Surveillance (FBI/DEA/CIA/NSA, etc.) don’t understand the difference between a data vacuum cleaner and a librarian. Any fool can run a data vacuum cleaner, fortunately or the Axis of Surveillance would have no results at all.
Fortunately, Erica Firment can help the Axis of Surveillance with the difference:
Why you should fall to your knees and worship a librarian
Ok, sure. We’ve all got our little preconceived notions about who librarians are and what they do.
Many people think of librarians as diminutive civil servants, scuttling about “Sssh-ing” people and stamping things. Well, think again buster.
Librarians have degrees. They go to graduate school for Information Science and become masters of data systems and human/computer interaction. Librarians can catalog anything from an onion to a dog’s ear. They could catalog you.
Librarians wield unfathomable power. With a flip of the wrist they can hide your dissertation behind piles of old Field and Stream magazines. They can find data for your term paper that you never knew existed. They may even point you toward new and appropriate subject headings.
People become librarians because they know too much. Their knowledge extends beyond mere categories. They cannot be confined to disciplines. Librarians are all-knowing and all-seeing. They bring order to chaos. They bring wisdom and culture to the masses. They preserve every aspect of human knowledge. Librarians rule. And they will kick the crap out of anyone who says otherwise.
Everybody has a favorite line but mine is:
People become librarians because they know too much.
There is a corollary which Erica doesn’t mention:
People resort to data vacuuming because they know too little. A condition that data vacuuming cannot fix.
Think of it as being dumb and getting dumber.
There are solutions to that problem but since the intelligence community isn’t paying me, it isn’t worth writing them down.
PS: Go to the Library Avengers store for products by Erica.