CENTER FOR ADVANCED STUDIES

Commercial data mining is focused on classifying propositional data from homogeneous databases (of like-transactions, for example, book sales), while counterterrorism applications seek to detect rare but significant relational links between heterogeneous data (representing a variety of activity or relations) among risk-adjusted populations. In general, commercial users have been concerned with identifying patterns among unrelated subjects based on their transactions in order to make predictions about other unrelated subjects doing the same. Intelligence analysts are interested in identifying patterns that evidence organization or activity among related subjects (or subjects pursuing related goals) in order to expose additional related or like subjects or activities. It is the network itself that must be identified, analyzed, and acted upon. [FN 20]... 18. The use of the Cato brief as exemplar of the pseudo-technical argument is not intended as an attack on the authors, both of whom..

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