Government kills off data-mining program that used personal information

The Department of Homeland Security has given up on one of its broadest anti-terrorism data-mining tools after investigators found it was tested with information about real people without the required privacy safeguards.\nKnown as ADVISE and begun in 2003, the Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement program was developed by the department and the Lawrence Livermore and Pacific Northwest national laboratories to be used for immigration, customs, border protection, biological defense and intelligence.\nTesting of the program was quietly suspended in March after questions arose over its compliance with privacy rules. Since then two internal Homeland Security reports found that tests had used live data about real people rather than made-up data for one to two years without meeting privacy requirements. One report also found that department analysts found the system time-consuming to use.\nDHS spokesman Russ Knocke said Wednesday the ADVISE project was being dropped entirely.\n“ADVISE is not expected to be restarted,” Knocke said. DHS’ Science and Technology Directorate “determined that new commercial products now offer similar functionality while costing significantly less to maintain than ADVISE.”