Overview of TIA and IAO Programs

1
Overview of TIA and IAO Programs
DARPAs Initiative on Countering Terrorism
Dr. Robert Popp Deputy Director Information
Awareness Office (IAO) rpopp_at_darpa.mil 703-248-152
0
2
IAO OrganizationDesigned for rapid prototyping
and assured transition

• New Technology Assessment
• Synthetic unclassified data
• Ordinary vanilla transactions (noise)
• Suspicious transactions (false alarms)
• Red team terrorist transactions (signal)
• Avoids privacy / sources methods issue

Transition Example
Development
Director DARPA
TIA
Director IAO
Other DARPA, GOTs/COTs Programs
INSCOM
Information Operations Center at INSCOM

• TIA Technology Assessment
• Real world operational environment
• Existing intel and counter-intel data
• Three-month experiment cycles
• Incremental transition to TIA nodes

Collaboration Decision Support Predictive
Modeling
DB Processing Pattern Recognition Privacy
Protection Biometrics
Foreign Language Technologies
3
What is TIA...Information technology is our
weapon against terrorism

• TIA (Terrorism Information Awareness)
• Experimental multi-agency RD system/network for
  counter terrorism
• Core enabling technologies
• Collaboration, Analysis and Decision Support
• Foreign Language Technologies
• Pattern Recognition and Predictive Modeling
• Database Processing
• Sources Methods and Privacy Protection
• Biometrics
• Supporting strategic, national focus
• NSC, IC, NFIP, Unified Commanders
• Preemption and prevention is what we want to
  enable
• TIA is not ...
• developing collections technology
• building a grand database or dossiers to
  snoop on Americans
• mining data in violation of U.S. laws or
  policies

4
Primary TIA Focus...Developing analytical tools

• TIA focus
• A collaborative network
• Providing users with data analyzing tools to
  solve problems together
• 3 month experiment threads
• Structured discovery with security
• Secure collaborative problem solving
• Link and group understanding
• Context aware visualization
• Decision making with corporate memory

5
TIA Analysis Goal...Harness various technologies
to invert bathtub curve
Old Way
Time
TIA
Research Analysis Production
6
Major TIA Accomplishments...
System Integration Framework
Collaborative RD Network
Technology Experiments Assessment

• Collaborative RD Network
• Allows agencies to solve CT problems
  collaboratively and experiment with prototype
  information technologies
• System Integration Framework
• Rigorous approach for IT integration analogous to
  signal processing
• Technology Experiments
• Conducting experiments every three months early
  results very promising

7
TIA Experiments...Test and assess CT technology
within operational setting

• Spiral developments
• Experiments every three months
• Real user solving real problems using existing
  intel/CI data

• Five experiment themes
• Metrics-driven approach to assess performance of
  technologies
• Developing new analytical concepts
• Automation and model-driven analysis are key
  tenets

8
Early Experimental Results...More and better CT
analysis in a shorter period of time
Analytical Modeling Tools
TIA Network Participants
Does al-Qaeda pose CBRNE threat to top five
cities in US?
JFIC, INSCOM, CIFA, JWAC worked a problem
Analytical Results
Peer-to-Peer Collaboration Tools
Create problem-centric space for data sharing
analysis
9
IAO Programs

• Core enabling technologies for TIA

10
Foreign Languages

• TIDES Program
• Translation Arabic Chinese
• Detection discover critical data
• Extraction pull out key entities
• Summarization reduce amount of material user
  must read
• EARS Program
• Rich automatic speech-to-text transcriptions
  (words metadata)
• Reduce word error rate to 5-10
• Babylon Program
• Rapid two-way translation
• Tactical field environments
• One-way devices transitioned to Afghanistan and
  Guantanemo
• 48 langs Farsi, Urdu, Pashto, etc

11
Foreign LanguagesArabic-to-English Translation
Human Translation
Machine Translation
Egypt Air May Resume its Flights to Libya
Tomorrow Cairo, April 6 (AFP) - An Egypt Air
official announced, on Tuesday, that Egypt Air
will resume its flights to Libya as of tomorrow,
Wednesday, after the UN Security Council had
announced the suspension of the embargo imposed
on Libya.
Egyptair Has Tomorrow to Resume Its Flights to
Libya Cairo 4-6 (AFP) - said an official at the
Egyptian Aviation Company today that the company
egyptair may resume as of tomorrow, Wednesday its
flights to Libya after the International Security
Council resolution to the suspension of the
embargo imposed on Libya.
Goal Machines translate at 85-90 of human
translation performance
12
Pattern RecognitionEvidence Extraction
Unstructured Text

• Evidence Extraction and Link Discovery (EELD)
  Program
• Discover complex patterns indicative of terrorist
  activity
• Three focus areas
• Evidence Extraction
• Link Discovery
• Pattern Learning

Entities, Events, Links
13
Predictive ModelingBehavioral analysis approach

• Antecedents
• US Military strikes in Middle East
• Israel occupies Palestinian regions
• Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement near

. . .

• Behavioral Tenets
• Behavior occurs as patterns
• Patterns occur in response to environment events
• Identification of patterns yields prediction
  influence

• Wargaming the Asymmetric Environment (WAE)
  Program
• Predict future terrorist group attacks (target,
  tactic, time, etc)
• Based on behavioral sciences
• Being used by agencies for IW

14
Collaboration, Analysis and Decision Support
Decision Support Tools

• Decision Support Tools
• Understand complex situations
• Provide competitive analyses
• Offer more options
• Utilize models for
• Context for information
• Definition of search parameters
• Method for sharing reasoning
• Collaboration
• Bring diversity to problem solving
• Addresses uncertainty in data
• Punch holes in the stovepipes
• Hybrid center-edge collaboration
• Center corporate memory, data stores, central
  servers
• Edge trust, agile, spontaneous

Genoa II Program
Hybrid Center-Edge Collaboration
15
Database Processing

• Genisys Program
• Enable analysis across physically disparate
  heterogeneous databases
• Transparent to the user
• Interoperable across agencies
• Develop subject- and pattern-based query and
  analysis mechanisms
• Database appliance concept
• Trusted guarded interface between user and
  database
• Analogous to a firewall
• Enforces privacy functions policies
• Complex queries with credentials
• Business rules and releasability
• Privacy treatment (anonymization, selective
  revelation, audit trails, etc)

Stovepipes
Data
TIA Focus
Collaboration and Decision Support Foreign
Language Technologies Pattern Recognition
Predictive Modeling DB Processing and Privacy
Protection
16
Summary...

• Agencies are experimenting w/ TIA prototypes
• Using existing, legally obtained data
• Researching technology to extract fuse sparse
  terrorist threat-indicative events out of a sea
  of information clutter
• Pull threat signal out of the noise
• Connect the dots
• Protect sources methods, privacy
• Ultimate success requires a co-evolution
• Technology
• Process/Operations
• Policy
• Culture