Military wants to scan communications to find internal threats
The Pentagon wants computers to see into the future -- and stop crimes before they happen.
As the U.S Army considers whether Maj. Nidal Hasan, the suspect in last year's Fort Hood massacre, should face a court-martial, it also is looking at whether the military missed signals that might have indicated what was about to happen.
Now a Pentagon research arm is asking scientists to create a way to scan billions of e-mails to identify suspects in advance so that crimes can be stopped before they are committed.
That's the goal of the latest $35 million project announced by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is credited with breakthroughs like the internet, GPS and stealth technology.
But this latest idea is already is drawing fire from privacy and security experts.
Bruce Schneier, author of "Secrets and Lies" and other books on security technology, criticized the DARPA idea as "un-American" and a police state ploy.
"This is what a police state does -- everyone watching what everyone does and the police watching your every move," Schneier told CNN in a telephone interview. "And what we learn from history is that police states never work. It never is safer."
He added, "We are American. We don't spy on everybody else. And as a security guy, it works great in the movies but in real life you aren't going to be any safer. ... The false claims are going to kill you."
Link:
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/10/27/pentagon.e.mail.profiling/index.html?hpt=T2
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