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Engineering |
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Henry
Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science |
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Terrorism vs. Privacy: UCLA Engineers Develop Revolutionary Software to Target Suspicious Communications Online While Meeting Privacy Concerns
Revolutionary software makes catching terrorists online more targeted than ever before
 Computer
science professor Rafail Ostrovsky. |
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The government's ability to balance the privacy
concerns of lawful U.S. citizens with effective monitoring of potential
terrorists has proven an increasingly difficult task, particularly
in recent months. But a landmark software development by researchers
at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science
may ease some of these privacy concerns by making the tracking of
terrorist communications over the Internet more efficient, and more
targeted, than ever before.
UCLA Engineering professor Rafail
Ostrovsky and graduate researcher William Skeith have developed
a new method to mine potential terrorist-related communications
that essentially narrows down the data to only those documents that
fit pre-set, secret criteria chosen by intelligence agencies. The
new approach filters down the information from billions of communications
to just those deemed essential - discarding communications from
law-abiding citizens before it ever reaches the intelligence community.
That means lawful U.S. citizens who don't fit the parameters are
automatically ruled out.
The truly revolutionary facet of the technology is that it is a
new and powerful example of a piece of code that has been mathematically
proven to be impossible to reverse-engineer. In other words, it
can't be analyzed to figure out its components, construction and
inner workings, or reveal what information it's collecting and what
information it's discarding - it won't give up its secrets. It can't
be manipulated or turned against the user.
Because the code cannot be analyzed, terrorists using the Internet
to communicate will never know if the filter has pinpointed their
data or not. For those seeking to thwart terrorism, this development
means less data to store and wade through in a secure setting, and,
ultimately, the ability to react more quickly, without fear of exposing
top-secret search criteria and tipping off the terrorists.
In a post-Sept. 11 reality, terrorist activity conducted via the
Internet - which offers easy accessibility and anonymity, a wide
reach with little censorship, and a fast flow of information - has
so far been difficult to monitor effectively due to the vast amounts
of data involved.
"Gathering data can be costly and time-consuming for intelligence
agencies. All of the potential data must first be pulled offline
into a trusted and classified environment, and then painstakingly
sifted through," Ostrovsky said. "With this new technology, based
on highly esoteric mathematics, the software can be distributed
to many machines on the Internet, not necessarily trusted or highly
secure. The software works by analyzing all of the data and then
having the appearance of putting all the data into a 'secure box.'
A secret filter inside the box dismisses some data as useless and
collects only relevant data according to the confidential criteria
that can be programmed into the software. And because it's all done
inside encrypted code, it's not apparent which, if any, of the data
has been selected and kept, except by the person who has deployed
the filter and has the decryption key," Ostrovsky added.
The filter criteria can be reset as often as intelligence analysts
deem necessary to keep up with the changing terminology of terrorists.
"While a savvy person may be able to tell that the program is running
in the background, they will not be able to tell what data is being
selected," Ostrovsky explains. "For example, even if Al Qaeda had
an extremely knowledgeable programmer and, say, they steal a laptop
with this program, they would not be able to figure out which documents
were selected and kept inside the 'secure box' and which were not.
By distributing this software all over the Internet to providers
and network administrators, you can easily monitor a huge data flow
in a distributed, cost-efficient manner, and choose only those documents
that look promising based on your secret criteria. The filter cannot
be broken in the same sense that one cannot crack time-tested public-key
encryption functions such as those already used for Internet commerce
and banking applications. In that aspect, it's essentially a bullet-proof
technology."
The discovery is a key breakthrough in the field and in the fight
against terrorism, but researchers are very aware of the need to
balance new technology with sensitive privacy concerns.
Ostrovsky, who also directs the Center
of Information and Computation Security at the school, explained,
"There have to be checks and balances. Like any tool, technology
can be used for good or bad. I view this research as a new and viable
way to combat terrorism that can also strike a balance with the
need for strong privacy protections for ordinary citizens. It's
an efficient data-gathering technology against the bad guys. In
that sense, it could be an exciting new tool in the U.S. Department
of Defense's arsenal against terror."
The technology also has other potential privacy-enhancing applications.
In addition to its use online, it also could be utilized by physicians
wishing to search patient records for certain medical conditions
while maintaining the patient's privacy from other workers in the
office, among other functions. The researchers already have filed
a patent on the work.
For more information, media should contact Melissa Abraham at 310.206.0540,
or via email at mabraham@support.ucla.edu.
- M. Abraham
01.23.06
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COPYRIGHT
2004 UCLA |
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