- Doug, the PROMIS software itself is old. We are talking about evolutions of that software over the last 15 years or so. In other words programmers *have* been "whipping up" not merely the equivalent, but in fact very advanced versions of this software. At any given time, there are thousands of 'whipped up' software packages competing for government contracts, some are better than others. The software at issue here is called Framework, from a Cambridge, MA company called Ptech. The software is PROMIS-derived and is used to simulataneously coordinate the FAA with NORAD and the Secret Service. Ptech is also works with DoD's research group DARPA to help transfer comercial software methodoligies to the defense sector. (see http://www.govexce.com/archdoc/rrg96/0996rrg5.htm) see also an article at that website about Ptech's alleged terrorist ties (http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1202/120602h1.htm) and "US probes terror ties to Boston software firm," by Jerry Guidera and Glenn R. Simpson, Wall St. Journal 12/06/02 http://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/index.jsp?section=static&page=ptech
As to the whether this stuff is the 'Holy Grail, consider the following: In recent decades, great strides have been made by the mutually fertile disciplines of mathematics, computer science, and neuroscience. Among the results has been a new discipline called cognitive neuroscience, which constitues a poerful new understanding of the way the human brain works (see Churchland, Gazzaniga - http://www.dartmouth.edu/~cogneuro/Gazzaniga.html) While this has illuminated some very fundamental and grand issues of philosophy, it also has applications so practical that they have reshaped our world. "Nueral Network" programming is modeled on the computational techniques used by the human brain - an electrochemical computer that uses neorons instead of semiconductors; the firing or non-firing of neurons instead of ones and zeroes.
With neural networking, software has become much smarter than it had been. Now it can perform multiple, related operations at the same time through parallel processing; now it can learn from setbacks, and use genetic algorithms to evolve its way out of limitations. Now it can respond to more kinds of data from the electronic environment, including "fuzzy" values that don't come in discreet numerial packages. This kind of computational power supports an inference engine that can digest the mined data into results that are not only descriptive of the systems present state but predictive for imminent and to some degree, even middle term outcomes. That's why the same family of programs that does enterprise architecture, which is descriptive (and prescriptive if you take its predictions as a mandate for cutting costs and firing people), comes to include risk management software, which is predictive of the future. It extrapolates from current trends in a more than quantitative way.
Conventional electronic surveillance finds patterns in data of other instruments; Ptech's Framework can exploit the patterns it detects and extrapolate future probabilities. Then it can integrate itself with the computers from which it is getting the information and intervene in their functioning. The result is a tool for surveillance and intervention. The program can identify suspect streams of cash in a banking network and allow a bank officer to freeze the suspect assets. Of course a user could direct the same program to prevent detection. It can discover salient anomalies for further scrutiny, or erase them from the record. And it can find errant flights in an air traffic map and initiate an intercept response. Or not. www.fromthewilderness.com
postscript: Remember the Massachusetts software company which the feds raided in search of terrorist ties? NBS's Lisa Myers found that Ptech's suspicious Saudi backer Yassin al-Qadi sold his interest at least three years ago and then offered $500,000 to Bush's 2000 Presidential campaign. The GOP rejected al-Qadi 'because it is illegal to take contributions from foreigners' http://www.tydallreport.com/tw0302.html
Joe W.