A new computer code developed by UCLA researchers may make it
easier and more cost effective for intelligence agencies to track
terrorist activity on the Internet.
But the code also raises questions about the danger it presents
to the privacy of everyday individuals.
Computer science Professor Rafail Ostrovsky and graduate student
William Skeith have been working for the past year and a half to
develop a method to gather and filter information on terrorist
activity from the Internet.
Currently, agencies must gather masses of potentially
terrorist-related information off the Internet and then sift
through it in a classified environment so the top-secret process of
analyzing the data is protected.
The UCLA researchers came up with a code that organizes the
online gathering, encryption and discarding of information without
anyone being able to tell which information is kept by the agency
and which is thrown away, Ostrovsky said.
Program users would determine which types of information they
would want kept and set the code so that any information gathered
relating to the set criteria would be stored.
At set times after it has been encrypted, the kept data would be
sent to the program user with the decryption code. It is at this
point that the gathered information would be viewable.
Ostrovsky said this method would be a great asset for
intelligence agencies like the CIA, which is currently in talks
with Ostrovsky about using the program.
He said at this point the actual software program has not been
developed, but the code proves that such a program would work.
“(We have) mathematics that proves that this works. This
is not science fiction. It is really possible,” he said.
Ostrovsky said the development of the software program would
take about six months and could cost between $300,000 and
$400,000.
Amit Sahai, associate professor of computer science and
associate director of the Center for Information and Computational
Security, said the program is especially useful because you can
outsource the search process without having anyone find out what
you’re searching for.
“It’s a really fantastic result from a number of
different viewpoints,” Sahai said.
Though it could help in the fight against terrorism that the
program can be used on regular computers anywhere in the world, it
can also be a means for malicious use of the programs by terrorists
themselves, Ostrovsky said.
Ostrovsky said his goal in creating the program is to aid the
government and other industries in gathering information more
efficiently.
He said the government report released after the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks indicated there was a massive intelligence
failure resulting from not collecting information and not
collecting it fast enough.
This program is capable of correcting this problem to help ward
off future terrorist attacks, he said.
“This is one tool in the arsenal of many tools since 9/11
that are being developed, that can potentially help to stop future
terrorist attacks,” he said.
Along with helping to gather information with the hope of
catching terrorist plans before they come to fruition, there is the
issue of the privacy of those law-abiding citizens whose Internet
communications may be part of the information gathering during this
process.
“I’m trying to help the financial industry and the
government go after the bad guys, while at the same time protecting
the privacy of individual law-abiding citizens,” he said.
Brad Huckins, a second-year computer science student, said even
in the process of trying to prevent terrorism, privacy laws must be
respected.
“I don’t know if we should (go with the program) at
the expense of people’s privacy,” he said.
With reports from Melinda Dudley, Bruin senior
staff.