Project Genoa was a software project commissioned by the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Ad ...

which was designed to analyze large amounts of data and metadata to help human analysts counter

terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...

Program synopsis

Genoa's primary function was

intelligence analysis Intelligence analysis is the application of individual and collective cognitive methods to weigh data and test hypotheses within a secret socio-cultural context. The descriptions are drawn from what may only be available in the form of deliberate ...

in order to assist human analysts. The program was designed to support both top-down and bottom-up approaches; a policy maker could hypothesize a possible attack and use Genoa to look for supporting evidence of such a plot, or it would compile pieces of intelligence into a diagram and suggest possible outcomes. Human analysts would then be able to modify the diagram to test various cases. Companies such as Integral Visuals, Saffron Technology, and Syntek Technologies were involved in Genoa's development. It cost a total of $42 million to complete the program.

History

Genoa was conceived in late 1995 by retired Rear Admiral

John Poindexter John Marlan Poindexter (born August 12, 1936) is a retired United States naval officer and Department of Defense official. He was Deputy National Security Advisor and National Security Advisor during the Reagan administration. He was convic ...

, a chief player in the Iran-Contra Affair. At the time, Poindexter was working at Syntek, a company often contracted to do work for the Department of Defense. He proposed a computer system that would help humans crunch large amounts of data in order to more effectively predict potential national security threats. Poindexter brought his ideas to former colleagues working with the

United States National Security Council The United States National Security Council (NSC) is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for consideration of national security, military, and foreign policy matters. Based in the White House, it is part of the Exec ...

. That year, a team of researchers was assembled for the project and began studying various historical events to which Genoa could be applied. The

Tokyo subway sarin attack The was an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated on 20 March 1995, in Tokyo, Japan, by members of the cult movement Aum Shinrikyo. In five coordinated attacks, the perpetrators released sarin on three lines of the Tokyo Metro (then ''Teito Rapid ...

in March was the primary focus. Instead of analyzing the attack itself, the researchers looked into the history of

Aum Shinrikyo , formerly , is a Japanese doomsday cult founded by Shoko Asahara in 1987. It carried out the deadly Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995 and was found to have been responsible for the Matsumoto sarin attack the previous year. The group says ...

, the group that perpetrated the attack, to find evidence that could have suggested their intentions. In order to pitch their ideas, the researchers set up a mock crisis command center in

's main building, full of monitors staffed by actors. An audience would watch as a fictitious scenario would unfold before them, guided along by an animated video segment. Poindexter called the presentation "A Day in the Life of an Analyst." Another mock center was set up near the DARPA building with the help of a

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywoo ...

set designer to serve the same purpose. Prominent viewers of the exhibition included

Richard A. Clarke Richard Alan Clarke (born October 27, 1950) is an American national security expert, novelist, and former government official. He served as the Counterterrorism Czar as the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Cou ...

, John Michael McConnell, and James R. Clapper. Genoa was commissioned in 1996 for development overseen by DARPA and completed in the 2002

fiscal year A fiscal year (or financial year, or sometimes budget year) is used in government accounting, which varies between countries, and for budget purposes. It is also used for financial reporting by businesses and other organizations. Laws in many ju ...

, becoming a component of the

Total Information Awareness Total Information Awareness (TIA) was a mass detection program by the United States Information Awareness Office. It operated under this title from February to May 2003 before being renamed Terrorism Information Awareness. Based on the conce ...

program. It was concluded that while Genoa helped officials better understand complex situations, it operated at a slow speed. The research initiated by the project was continued in its immediate follow-on program,

Genoa II Project Genoa II was a software project that originated with the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Information Awareness Office and the successor to the Genoa program. Originally part of DARPA's wider Total Information Awar ...

. One of the goals of this successor was to increase the speed of analyses. The program was actively utilized by the

Defense Intelligence Agency The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is an intelligence agency and combat support agency of the United States Department of Defense, specializing in defense and military intelligence. A component of the Department of Defense (DoD) and th ...

References

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External links

* https://web.archive.org/web/20081125153748/http://www.darpa.mil/darpatech99/Presentations/isopdf/isotia.pdf DARPA Mass surveillance Military computers