OT: Report to Congress Regarding the Terrorism Information Awareness Program (TIA)
The senator that stopped the whole thing that spoke on CNBC had made it pretty clear I thought, but after a few minutes of research on my own, I found this proof of what it was all about. It is my style to fade the media as well, but I thought it was clear. They already had 1000 "traders" registered to start using the system when it was stopped. As for the graphic of the darboard. It was directly arhcived from the DARPA site before it was taken offline by the EFF site. That was why I posted it to begin with. I would not have done so based merely upon believing some MP3 generation X propaganda web-site.
From the DARPA webite: darpa.mil
Specific Link (search FUTUREMAP in pdf file)
darpa.mil
Futures Markets Applied to Prediction (FutureMAP) OVERVIEW:
The FutureMAP Program provides DoD with market-based techniques for avoiding surprise and predicting future events. Strategic decisions depend upon the accurate evaluation of the likelihood of future events. This analysis often requires independent contributions by experts in a wide variety of fields, with the resulting difficulty of combining the various opinions into one assessment. Market-based techniques provide a tool for producing these assessments. Applications include analysis of political stability in regions of the world, prediction of the timing and impact on national security of emerging technologies, assessment of the outcomes of advanced technology programs, or other future events of interest to DoD. The rapid reaction of markets to knowledge held by only a few participants may provide an early warning system to avoid surprise.
The application of FutureMAP within TIA will answer predictive questions such as "Will terrorists attack Israel with bioweapons in the next year?" To answer this question, FutureMAP would aggregate information from a variety of experts, e. g., analysts for Israel and the Middle East and specialists in bioweapons and other technical areas. The technology question is how to combine this disparate information. TECHNICAL APPROACH: FutureMAP's innovation is to use markets to replace today's approach of discussion and consensus among experts. The new approach is to set up, as it were, a "market" in two kinds of futures contracts: One pays $1 if an attack takes place; the other pays $1 if there is no attack. Market participants trade the issued contracts freely. Prices and spreads signal probabilities and confidence. Since markets provide incentives for good judgment and self-selection, the market will effectively aggregate information among knowledgeable participants. This approach has proven successful in predictions concerning elections, monetary policy decisions, and movie box office receipts; DARPA research is investigating its success in Defense-related areas. DARPA has supported two seedling efforts under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program to test the feasibility of FutureMAP. |
