This story is totally Orwellian -- no doubt people who sell stocks short have also been catalogued for further investigation by these Nazis-in-training
Tracking Terrorists the Las Vegas Way
CIA-funded firm uses techniques for catching gambling cheaters to help government identify terrorists.
Kim Zetter, special to PCWorld.com
Wednesday, August 07, 2002
LAS VEGAS--It might not seem that gambling sharks and Al Qaeda terrorists have much in common. But a firm here that helps casinos catch cheaters is now using its software to help the government track people suspected of being terrorists.
Jeff Jonas, founder and chief scientist of Systems Research and Development, offered a glimpse of his company's NORA (Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness) technology at the recent Black Hat security conference.
NORA could just as well be called In Search of Kevin Bacon, as it crunches data to find the six degrees of separation that folklorists say connect all people in the world. SRD designed the program to catch card counters and other cheaters at casino gaming tables, and to detect collusion between corrupt dealers and gamblers.
Fuzzy Logic
The version of the software used by casinos can use face recognition to quickly match a surveillance-camera image with a database of known cheaters. It also uses fuzzy logic to help detect less obvious relationships between casino personnel and known cheaters who appear on the Nevada Gaming Commission's blacklist, by comparing and cross-checking employee data on resumes and company applications.
NORA evaluates information such as names, addresses, social security and credit card numbers, and emergency contact numbers in company records, searching for similarities among employees and cheaters. Companies can also get data from firms like Choicepoint that aggregate information such as driver's license and vehicle registration information, land deed records, and credit histories.
For instance, NORA might reveal that a dealer was once married to a woman whose maiden name matches the surname of a suspected cheater, raising the possibility that the dealer and the cheater were once in-laws.
Jonas cautions that such data alone doesn't establish guilt. Still, it could help investigators optimize their surveillance resources by homing in on the likeliest possible suspects.
Investigators first funnel raw data through a clean-up process to reconcile conflicting information. For instance, someone named Francis George might appear on one list with an address at 224 Washington Street and on another list as George Francis at the same address or as Frank George at 242 Washington Street.
NORA looks for all permutations of a name or address to identify a possible alias, to reconcile mistakes in data entry, and to deliberate attempts to alter data. Something as simple as transposed numbers or misspelled street names, for example, could throw a standard background check off track.
Government Potential
NORA's analytical capabilities could prove useful to government intelligence agencies trying to ferret out terrorist cells entrenched in communities.
U.S. intelligence agencies endured criticism following reports that information on terrorists was not properly analyzed or disseminated before September 11. The government amassed a large amount of data, but was slow to process and analyze it.
"Many organizations have applications that hold a lot of data," says chief executive officer John Slitz of SRD. "But these applications don't accept a query, so you can't analyze the data." NORA creates a data warehouse for storing information where users can quickly add new information and cross-check it with other entries.
The FBI could cross-check lists of Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay naval base, or trace relationships among suspected terrorists being held in the United States.
Likewise, the FBI could quickly check airline passenger lists to determine whether a suspect at a Cleveland airport is the nephew of a known Egyptian terrorist, once shared an address with another terrorist suspect in Germany, or uses the same credit card or bank account number as a suspect in Texas. NORA analyzes data in near real-time, returning query results in about 8 seconds, according to Slitz.
The program collects data from the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist List as well as from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control. The Most Wanted Terrorist List compiles names of individuals and organizations considered a threat to the United States, including terrorists and drug traffickers.
SRD itself is backed by the CIA's venture-capital firm In-Q-Tel, which invests in companies that develop products useful to intelligence operations.
Employment Opportunities
Beyond its value to government agencies, the NORA software could be used by airlines, weapons manufacturers, or nuclear facilities to conduct background checks of prospective employees for relationships that could cause concern.
"If you found out that an employee previously lived in an apartment with four other people, one of whom had been picked up for overstaying a visa, you would take a look at all other people in that apartment and others that this person had been associated with," Slitz says.
SRD has approached the Food Marketing Institute about putting NORA to work in its 1500 member companies in 60 countries. The software could detect relationships between employees of food and beverage plants and terrorist suspects, to prevent possible tampering with food and beverage supplies. FMI members, which include retail supermarkets and grocery wholesalers, provide 75 percent of all groceries in the United States.
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