SKYNET is a program by the U.S.

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...

that performs

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

analysis on

communications data Communications data (sometimes referred to as traffic data or metadata) concerns information about communication. Communications data is a part of a message that should be distinguished from the content of the message. It contains data on the comm ...

to extract information about possible terror suspects. The tool is used to identify targets, such as

al-Qaeda , image = Flag of Jihad.svg , caption = Jihadist flag, Flag used by various al-Qaeda factions , founder = Osama bin Laden{{Assassinated, Killing of Osama bin Laden , leaders = {{Plainlist, * Osama bin Lad ...

couriers, who move between

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a family of standards to describe the protocols for second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks, as used by mobile devices such as mobile phones and Mobile broadband modem, mobile broadba ...

cellular network A cellular network or mobile network is a telecommunications network where the link to and from end nodes is wireless network, wireless and the network is distributed over land areas called ''cells'', each served by at least one fixed-locatio ...

s. Specifically, mobile usage patterns such as swapping

SIM card A typical SIM card (mini-SIM with micro-SIM cutout)A SIM card or SIM (subscriber identity module) is an integrated circuit (IC) intended to securely store an international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) number and its related key, which are u ...

s within phones that have the same ESN,

MEID A mobile equipment identifier (MEID) is a globally unique number identifying a physical piece of CDMA2000 mobile station equipment. The number format is defined by th3GPP2 report S.R0048but in practical terms, it can be seen as an International M ...

IMEI The International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) is a numeric identifier, usually Unique identifier, unique, for 3GPP and iDEN mobile phones, as well as some satellite phones. It is usually found printed inside the battery compartment of the ph ...

number are deemed indicative of covert activities. Like many other security programs, the SKYNET program uses graphs that consist of a set of nodes and edges to visually represent social networks. The tool also uses

classification Classification is the activity of assigning objects to some pre-existing classes or categories. This is distinct from the task of establishing the classes themselves (for example through cluster analysis). Examples include diagnostic tests, identif ...

techniques like

random forest Random forests or random decision forests is an ensemble learning method for statistical classification, classification, regression analysis, regression and other tasks that works by creating a multitude of decision tree learning, decision trees ...

analysis. Because the

data set A data set (or dataset) is a collection of data. In the case of tabular data, a data set corresponds to one or more table (database), database tables, where every column (database), column of a table represents a particular Variable (computer sci ...

includes a very large proportion of

true negative A false positive is an error in binary classification in which a test result incorrectly indicates the presence of a condition (such as a disease when the disease is not present), while a false negative is the opposite error, where the test resu ...

s and a small

training set In machine learning, a common task is the study and construction of algorithms that can learn from and make predictions on data. Such algorithms function by making data-driven predictions or decisions, through building a mathematical model from ...

, there is a risk of

overfitting In mathematical modeling, overfitting is "the production of an analysis that corresponds too closely or exactly to a particular set of data, and may therefore fail to fit to additional data or predict future observations reliably". An overfi ...

Bruce Schneier Bruce Schneier (; born January 15, 1963) is an American cryptographer, computer security professional, privacy specialist, and writer. Schneier is an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Fellow at the Berkman ...

argues that a false positive rate of 0.008% would be low for commercial applications where "if Google makes a mistake, people see an ad for a car they don't want to buy" but "if the government makes a mistake, they kill innocents."

Participation and partnerships

NSA directorates participating: * Signals Intelligence: S21, S22, SSG * Research: R6 * Technology: T12, T14 It has partnerships with TMAC/FASTSCOPE, MIT Lincoln labs and

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

Controversy

The SKYNET project was linked with drone systems, thus creating the potential for false-positives to lead to deaths. According to

NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...

, the SKYNET project is able to accurately reconstruct crucial information about the suspects including their social relationships, habits, and patterns of movements through graph-based visualization of

data. However, scholars criticize that current security literature conflate statistical discrepancies with behavioral abnormalities and that the anomaly detection methodology SKYNET perpetuates the self/other binary. For example,

Al-Jazeera Al Jazeera Media Network (AJMN; , ) is a private-media conglomerate headquartered in Wadi Al Sail, Doha, funded in part by the government of Qatar. The network's flagship channels include Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera English, which pr ...

's bureau chief in

Islamabad Islamabad (; , ; ) is the capital city of Pakistan. It is the country's tenth-most populous city with a population of over 1.1 million and is federally administered by the Pakistani government as part of the Islamabad Capital Territory. Bu ...

Ahmad Zaidan Ahmad () is an Arabic male given name common in most parts of the Muslim world. Other English spellings of the name include Ahmed. It is also used as a surname. Etymology The word derives from the root ( ḥ-m-d), from the Arabic (), from t ...

, was wrongly identified as the most probable member of

and the

Muslim Brotherhood The Society of the Muslim Brothers ('' ''), better known as the Muslim Brotherhood ( ', is a transnational Sunni Islamist organization founded in Egypt by Islamic scholar, Imam and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna in 1928. Al-Banna's teachings s ...

on their records.

References

{{reflist , 30em , refs = {{cite web , last1 = Grothoff , first1 = Christian , last2 = Porup , first2 = J. M. , date = 16 February 2016 , title = The NSA's SKYNET program may be killing thousands of innocent people , url = http://arstechnica.co.uk/security/2016/02/the-nsas-skynet-program-may-be-killing-thousands-of-innocent-people , website =

Ars Technica UK ''Ars Technica'' is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, sci ...

{{cite web , title = SKYNET: Applying Advanced Cloud-based Behavior Analytics , url = https://theintercept.com/document/2015/05/08/skynet-applying-advanced-cloud-based-behavior-analytics , website =

The Intercept ''The Intercept'' is an American left-wing nonprofit news organization that publishes articles and podcasts online. ''The Intercept'' has published in English since its founding in 2014, and in Portuguese since the 2016 launch of the Brazilia ...

, date = 8 May 2015 , access-date = 17 February 2016 , archive-date = 1 January 2020 , archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20200101054852/https://theintercept.com/document/2015/05/08/skynet-applying-advanced-cloud-based-behavior-analytics/ , url-status = dead {{cite web , last = Crockford , first = Kade , date = 8 May 2015 , title = MIT and Harvard Worked with NSA on SKYNET Project , url = https://privacysos.org/blog/mit-and-harvard-worked-with-nsa-on-skynet-project , publisher = Privacy SOS {{cite news , date = 18 February 2016 , last = Robbins , first = Martin , title = Has a rampaging AI algorithm really killed thousands in Pakistan? , url = https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-lay-scientist/2016/feb/18/has-a-rampaging-ai-algorithm-really-killed-thousands-in-pakistan , newspaper =

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

{{Cite web, title=The highest scoring selector that traveled to Peshawar and Lahore is PROB AHMED ZAIDAN , format=GIF , url=http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2016/02/skynet-courier-detection-via-machine-learning-p17-normal.gif , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304223801/http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2016/02/skynet-courier-detection-via-machine-learning-p17-normal.gif , archive-date=2016-03-04 National Security Agency operations Intelligence agency programmes revealed by Edward Snowden Drone warfare Extrajudicial killings Targeted killing

Participation and partnerships

Controversy

See also

References