By Robert Barker, Infoglide Senior VP & Chief Marketing Officer
So the title “Catching Terrorists and Making the World a Safer Place” certainly caught my eye! And the content of the post did not disappoint, as the author Chris Boorman of Informatica did a great job of crystallizing the issue that drove the creation of this blog over two years ago: “So how do we balance the freedom of movement we have come to expect as hard-working citizens with the need to spot terrorists?” His answer is “technology” and of course we agree.
When Identity Resolution Daily first began in the summer of 2007, we pointed out the constant tension between freedom and privacy versus the need for security:
In the US, the debate between personal privacy (and perhaps liberties in general) versus security is a long-standing one with roots in the very founding of the nation itself. Folks interested in obtaining data often wonder how much people are willing to give up in the name of greater security or convenience. On the other hand, those more focused on privacy worry about how data is obtained, what it’s used for and where it ends up.
Infoglide CEO Mike Shultz also discussed the responsibility that comes with providing technology that deals with identity:
It was important to all of us here that we didn’t create some sort of Big-Brother-enabling technology. As a result, we designed software that can resolve identities across multiple sources while protecting data privacy and security.
In a more recent post, we talked about the components needed for an effective identity resolution solution. It’s not enough to have great similarity matching algorithms, and it’s not even enough to be able to find hidden connections in real time across millions of rows of data, although both those capabilities are obviously required. The real test in catching terrorists and making the world a safer place using identity resolution is how decision-making is automated and integrated into existing business processes.
“As reported in The New York Times and on the TSA Web site, the Secure Flight program will improve upon current practices in matching passenger identities to watch lists in many ways. At first glance, this appears to be a well thought-out program that conforms to several basic tenets of Master Data Management (in bold below), in this case for the ‘Customer’ entity.”
“Of approximately 100 respondents, 28 used an EMR, of which 40% used the EncounterPRO Pediatric EMR. There were only three other EMRs used more than once, and they were used by only 10%, 7%, and 7% of the survey respondents respectively.”
“In addition, ICE agents for the first time will fully participate in the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force Fusion Center. The center allows participating federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, including DEA and the FBI, to share information and analytical resources to enhance their overall investigative capacity.”
“Data could be considered a constant while information is a variable that redefines data for each specific use. Data is not truly a constant since it is constantly changing. However, information is still derived from data and many different derivations can be performed while data is in the same state (i.e. before it changes again).”
[Post from Infoglide] Speaking of Narrative Fallacy
Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable uses “narrative fallacy” to describe how we humans tend to enhance ex post facto our ability to predict events that in fact are extremely complex and random. A recent post on Netrics HD attempts to leverage this argument to demonstrate the superiority of “Machine Learning” (i.e. probabilistic analysis) over “data matching” (i.e. deterministic analysis).
“Lest we forget, our country is trying to establish similar capabilities with the widespread initiative to implement electronic health records (EHRs). My health history should travel with me — just as easily as my financial information. With some sort of authentication process, a “core” set of data should be easily available to assist in my receipt of health services.”
“The government’s aim is to streamline the process of checking travelers’ names against its watch lists — a task currently handled separately by each airline — and to collect more detailed information so passengers with names similar to those on the watch list are less likely to be mistakenly detained. Asking for a birth date, for instance, decreases the likelihood that a child with a name close to one on the list would be subject to an additional search — one example of a false match that has led to complaints.”
“Popular targets of organized retail crime rings include Crest Whitestrips, Rogaine, Similac baby formula, razor blades, and pregnancy tests. Having not been stored or managed properly, these items can pose serious health risks for innocent shoppers looking for a good bargain. And, because most of these items are sold “new in box,” well-meaning consumers are unaware that what they purchased may be spoiled or expired — and stolen.”
“The very low levels of adoption of electronic health records in U.S. hospitals suggest that policymakers face substantial obstacles to the achievement of health care performance goals that depend on health information technology.”
“The changes from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s Program Manager for the Information Sharing Environment (PM-ISE) come as that office continues a pilot program for the SAR information sharing program at sites around the country. The program uses state and local intelligence fusion centers as a node for verifying and disseminating data on suspicious activity through information technology systems.”
“TSA collects as little personal information as possible to conduct effective watch list matching. Also, personal data is collected, used, distributed, stored, and disposed of in accordance with stringent guidelines and all applicable privacy laws and regulations.”
“‘When businesses cheat the system to save money, they are only setting themselves up to pay later — by serving time in prison,’ says state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner.”
“According to Wikipedia, ‘disintermediation is the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain: ‘cutting out the middleman’… Buyers bypass the middlemen (wholesalers and retailers) in order to buy directly from the manufacturer and thereby pay less.’”
“Data matching is commonly defined as the comparison of two or more records in order to evaluate if they correspond to the same real world entity (i.e. are duplicates) or represent some other data relationship (e.g. a family household). Data matching is commonly plagued by what I refer to as The Two Headed Monster…”
“CrocTail provides an interface for browsing information about several hundred thousand U.S. publicly traded corporations and their many foreign and domestic subsidiaries. Information from company Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings has been parsed and annotated by CorpWatch to highlight specific corporate accountability issues. CrocTail also serves as a demonstration of the features and data available through the CorpWatch API.”
“While the T.S.A. has announced Aug. 15 as a target date for the airlines to begin asking for each passenger’s full name, gender and date of birth, and has already begun publicizing the program, called Secure Flight, the agency acknowledged that it would go into effect in phases as the airlines update their systems.”
“‘When someone commits insurance fraud they’re not just stealing from insurance companies,’ said Sanger. ‘They’re stealing from fellow customers.’ A recent study from the N.I.C.B. shows property/casualty insurance fraud costs Americans nearly $30 billion each year.”
“‘I look forward to medical records going electronic,’ said Howard Schmidt, the former White House cybersecurity czar, ‘but I have a tremendous amount of concern about building a really, really good healthcare infrastructure… and then securing it later.’ Schmidt spoke with PCWorld at RSA 2009.”
“Microsoft has moved further in its plans to introduce a master data management (MDM) capability into its product line. Microsoft had previously purchased Stratature, an MDM vendor known for its dimension management, and has used this as the basis for its MDM offering, previously known as Project Bulldog.”
“With gender and birth information, the system, known as Secure Flight, will be better able to prevent misidentification of passengers who have names similar to individuals on the watch lists and better identify those who appear to pose a threat, the TSA said.”
“Supporters say electronic medical records will boost the quality of medical care, reduce duplication of services, and limit errors, all of which could save money and lives. The National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine estimates that between 44,000 and 98,000 people in the United States die each year because of errors such as being prescribed medicine to which they are allergic.”
” Beginning June 1, travelers will need either a U.S. passport, a state-issued enhanced driver’s license, a U.S. passport card or a trusted traveler card to enter the country through land or seaports. Passports were made mandatory for air travel in 2007.”
“The trio appeared to be doing the kind of photographic surveillance terrorists might do before they strike a target, the officers concluded. So they contacted the Southern Nevada Counter-Terrorism Center. The center is run by Metro Police and houses investigators and analysts from local, state and federal law enforcement agencies in Southern Nevada.”
“Our customer data is now more siloed than it ever was, it doesn’t match, and the owners of the respective systems that process it don’t talk to each other much. The single version of the truth has eluded us. We’re still trying to sell customers products they already have.”
“A recent NPR/Kaiser Family Foundation poll shows that the American public is surprisingly more positive about the potentials of EHRs than most professionals. People already are familiar with computerized information and accept its risks.”
“The interesting question is how much pressure this puts on the other MDM players with data quality solutions (like Dataflux and SAP/Business Objects) to build out their data profiling capabilities into the area of data discovery.”
“There are less than 400,000 individuals on the consolidated terrorist watch list and less than 50,000 individuals on the no-fly and selectee lists. Individuals on the no-fly and selectee lists are identified by law enforcement and intelligence partners as legitimate threats to transportation requiring either additional screening or prohibition from boarding an aircraft.”
“TDWI World Conference Chicago 2009 was held May 3-8 in Chicago, Illinois at the Hyatt Regency Hotel and was a tremendous success. I attended as a Data Quality Journalist for the International Association for Information and Data Quality (IAIDQ). I used Twitter to provide live reporting from the conference. Here are my notes from the courses I attended…”
“A recent post, ‘Terrorist Watchlist, Troubling Flaws Revealed’, starts out by making a valid point. If the terrorist watchlist is flawed, then the name matching results against such a list will be flawed. The author then goes on to reach related conclusions through rationalization rather than reasoning.”
“Identity resolution will get its due. Sure, you can call it infrastructure. Processing and rules intensive, customer identity resolution has been relegated to the underlying algorithms of third-party data providers, MDM, and data quality vendors. However, companies are recognizing that they may have unique customer data-matching needs-a bank we work with has more than 50 definitions of a household-and they’ll be looking at smarter, more specialized ways to automate them.”
“Chief David Kunkle, who championed the unit’s formation in January 2007, refers to it as the “brains” of a department that reported a 10 percent drop in crime last year and a nearly 19 percent decline in the first quarter of this year.”
“‘The use of multiple identities is common in the criminal world and Al-Qaeda’s own training manual requires its operatives to use false identities to hide their terrorist activities. Exploiting variations of a criminal’s real name is, perhaps, the simplest way of acquiring a new identity. Typical approaches are to use name variations or switching the order of names,’ added Pearson. ‘Other data, such as dates of birth are often manipulated simply by transposing digits.’”
“‘By offering address verification in a SaaS model, we are enabling organizations of all sizes to maintain accurate contact data in a cost-effective platform,’ said Joel Curry, chief operating officer, Experian QAS. ‘As businesses change over time, our new infrastructure is able to adapt to shifting demands.’
By Charles Clendenen, Infoglide Director of Professional Services
A recent post, “Terrorist Watchlist, Troubling Flaws Revealed”, starts out by making a valid point. If the terrorist watchlist is flawed, then the name matching results against such a list will be flawed. The author then goes on to reach related conclusions through rationalization rather than reasoning.
To be fair, it helps to understand the technology behind the matching in order to reach a reasonable conclusion. The author assumes that using inexact matching to reduce false negatives will necessarily multiply the number of false positives. In the absence of other factors, that would be accurate. But it turns out that if in addition to the name you add additional attributes like date of birth and gender to the process, identity resolution technology greatly reduces the number of additional false positives during the initial screening to an acceptable and manageable level.
We’ve written often here about achieving a balance between security and privacy. In an early post entitled “Privacy and Security Advocates: It’s a Good Thing We Can’t All Get Along,” we addressed the tension between privacy and security:
Achieving a balance between privacy and security is critically important to the survival of our American democracy. At this juncture in our history, the threat of terrorism has caused us to restrict some rights to privacy for the sake of national security. Without a certain level of security then American lives will be lost. Conversely, without a certain level of privacy, the American way of life will be lost. And at times, we as a nation have made mistakes when the pendulum has swung too far either way. Fortunately, we seem to keep returning to a state of equilibrium. It’s the howls of protest that arise when proponents of one side earns a win over the other, the constant, never-ending debate that keeps both sides in check and ensures a perpetual balance.
The reason we confidently address the issue is because we’re backed by sophisticated identity resolution technology that can be configured to be amazingly accurate. Sometimes people think that technology is the problem. In this case, identity resolution technology provides the solution.
Infoglide Software provides entity resolution and analysis solutions for retail, banking, insurance, government, and law enforcement. Without the need for data cleansing or warehousing, Infoglide Software's Identity Resolution Engine™ (IRE) analyzes all of the information relating to individuals and/or entities from multiple sources of data and then applies...
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