And talking about collaborative filtering. Here it is on a massive scale. A new plan from Admiral Poindexter’s Information Awareness Office for a Total Information Awareness System(s). And people were asking if collaborative filtering had any applications outside ecommerce.
While not entirely a CF system in itself it would probably include elements of CF in the data mining. It’s remit would be to filter an enormous amount of information and try and fit that to profiles of potential threats to the US. Then to track those individuals more closely. CF would be ideal for the first round matching with probably some human intervention required for second level tracking (in my opinion for sense).
Perhaps up to this point I’ve sounded a little detached and rational about this as it popped back onto my mental radar while thinking about CF. But this is craziness in the extreme, excuse me while I froth in anger for a few minutes. More excellent information is on the epic site, that has a news tracker and some great background.
We could well be hearing more from the IAO in the future, my money is on them as successor to the NSA, they are the crown prince of big brother machinations. The NSA was pre-eminent in the age when information was scarce and the problem was getting hold of it and decoding it. Now in the age of information overload that just ain’t a problem anymore. Making sense of the huge volume of data that any US agency can (or could depending on future legislation) get a hold of.
This all depends on the next year or so. As I was reading on BBC news, in the opinion of one insider all they need is one more terrorist attack and it will be full stream ahead on Total Information Awareness. The public would be behind any measure that promised to stop it, and as there are also movements to replace Poindexter as the IAO’s head, we could end up with some rabid 20th century version of J. Edgar Hoover at it’s helm.
Totalitarianism in a newer and scarier form. In a country where the populace is drugged by apparently free media (which means that the media is free to be self serving) and the standard of living is high enough for people not to ask questions we are already seeing a curtailing of rights and a resurgence in information control. Interesting and worrying to see where it might go.
