Information Exploitation

ATL is breaking down massive datasets of intelligence information using a mathematical framework in order to augment current intelligence by rapidly finding patterns and relationships in data.

Objectives

The Intelligence Community (IC) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) analyze extremely large data sources, often containing more than one million gigabytes of data. Finding critical bits of information in these massive data sources has been an impossible task until now. We are exploiting these data sources to augment what they already know and to discover what they need to know.

We are providing the IC and DHS with these technologies and capabilities and incorporating them into new and existing intelligence systems. Our ultimate goal is the acceptance of our technology by the intelligence analyst who has little time to learn how to use our technology when tasked to track and identify potential terrorist acts before they occur.

Key Technologies

• Social Network Analysis Technology (SONAT):
  • Find terrorist cells before they strike
  • Find experts in large organizations, like those in military operations
  • Discover what you need to know
• Large-scale, ad hoc data mining to create new database indices that fit the immediate need without moving data
• Voice-to-text conversion to detect topics of interest over voice channels to augment the SNA with valuable, corroborating evidence.

Our solution arises entirely from technology developed through basic and applied research that we conduct and that is funded in part by Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems and Solutions. Using our new mathematical framework, we can assemble pieces of evidence, such as email messages, into contextually related facts that are ranked by relevance to a user's information needs. Due to the statistical nature of the kinds of data used by the IC and DHS, this can be done with incredible speed, even on the largest data sets. As applied to ad hoc data mining, we can index the data auto-morphically, meaning that we model it after the user's own way of thinking.

Also supported by Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems and Solutions, we are working on voice-to-text conversion and developing innovative integration of existing software components. This technology will provide important evidence that can be leveraged into our SNA and DM technologies.

Applications and Transition Opportunities

Our SONAT is a highly effective tool for equally sensitive intelligence applications—is ready for transition into an intelligence operation to demonstrate its ability to track email traffic within groups of interest.

Information Exploitation is one of several Business Areas for the Distributed Processing Laboratory