Thanks! We can have lots of fun with this!
> A second group is being led by Accenture. It has
^^^^^^^^^
(formerly Anderson Consulting)
> worked for months on a prototype with a variety of
> companies, including Delta. Data giant Equifax, Sabre
> Inc. (which is responsible for about half of U.S.
> airline reservations), IBM and other companies have
> also been working on profiling efforts.
>
> Both systems are designed to use travel information
> and other data to create models of "normal" activity.
> Then they will look for variations in individual
> behavior that might suggest risk. Both may eventually
^^^^ Risk? Like the risk of cratering the seventh largest firm in the S&P 500?
> make use of some sort of biometric system that uses
> iris scans, fingerprints or other immutable
> characteristics.
>
> Officials at both HNC and Accenture said they take
> care with the personal information their systems
> collect and parse. The HNC prototype, for instance,
> does not link a passenger's personal information to a
> passenger's threat index. Officials also pledged that
> there will be no racial profiling, in part because
> ethnicity often has no bearing on potential risk.
^^^^^^^^^ Were the responsible parties at Enron a heterogeneous group with respect to ethnicity, religion, education, and annual salary?
> The Accenture system also creates a threat index,
> using massive computing power and relational database
> software. It examines travel data to look for things
> such as routes involving odd destinations or flying
> patterns. To search for threads linking individuals,
> the system will sift huge amounts of travel records,
> real estate histories and "seven layers" of passenger
> associates, according to Accenture partner Brett
> Ogilvie.
Is this analogous to picking up a correlation between wire transfers to Cayman Island banks, purchases of million dollar homes in Aspen, and impending debt default?
> For instance, it would note if an individual lived at
> the former address of someone considered high-risk.
> Theoretically, the system could be calibrated to watch
> for people with links to restaurants or other places
> thought to be favored by terrorist cells. It might
> also note phone calls and match individuals against
> government watch lists. A potential link to a
> threatening character or region could boost a
> passenger's score, he said.
Does it get this information from the public accounting side of the biz? From grocery store checkout profiles?
> A limited model report, generated by Accenture on one
> individual, looked like any number of publicly
> available dossiers provided by information services.
> It included all his addresses for the past two
> decades, the telephone numbers and former addresses of
> people who now occupy those residences, and the names,
> ages, addresses, telephone numbers and partial Social
> Security numbers of possible relatives. Some of the
> information was incomplete or, apparently, unrelated
> to the passenger.
Will they charge us for collecting all of this information, or will they finance it by selling futures contracts on the sale of information dossiers in a yet to be created marketplace recently deregulated by Wendy Gramm?
> The company said it would eventually like to have more
> data in the analysis, including embassy warnings,
> passport information, foreign watch lists. Eventually,
> with government approval, they would link the system
> to a national ID or some sort of biometric or both.
I can't wait.
Chris