'Seeing' Buried Clues In Fuzzy Data

[pneumaticmatt]

For those of us that may wonder "How is it possible for the government to search through all of the data they are collecting on the citizens and make something useful out if it?"

_http://www.technologynewsdaily.com/node/8515

The centers’ interdisciplinary researchers are automating how analysts recognize and rate potential threats. Mathematicians, logicians, and linguists make the collective universe of data assume a meaningful shape. They assign brightness, color, texture, and size to billions of known and apparent facts, and they create rules to integrate these values so threats stand out. For example, a day’s cache of video, cell phone calls, photos, bank records, chat rooms, and intercepted emails may take shape as a blue-gray cloud (picture, lower-right). If terror is afoot in L.A. and Boston, those cities are highlighted on a U.S. map