Case Study Security.

In order to serve its purpose, The Machine is fed copies of (essentially) all surveillance camera feeds and electronic communications worldwide. It can then analyze this data to track people, infer their social networks, and look for evidence that they are engaged in nefarious activities. These ndings are then forwarded to appropriate individuals (various elements of the Federal government for terrorist activities, or the series protagonists for other deadly threats).

The Machine has two major safeguards against abuse. It is designed to operate as a black box, meaning that its inner workings are hidden from view it will reveal neither the raw information it uses, nor the way it analyzes the data. As a consequence of being a black box, The Machine will only emit the social security number of an individual involved in some way in the crime. The number may belong to either victim or perpetrator, leaving the team receiving the report to determine whether they need to protect or thwart the aged individual. (In some cases, The Machine may report multiple SSNs at once. In these cases, it still does not indicate victim or perpetrator, nor does it necessarily indicate that only one event is being reported.)

Please respond to each of the following questions. For questions which have yes or no answers, also include an explanation of your reasoning.

1. Setting aside legal and ethical considerations, what are the major technical challenges involved in building something like The Machine? (Hint: consider data acquisition, management, and analysis, and other physical factors.)

2. Would reducing the data collection of The Machine from the entire world to, say, the city of New York, reduce any of the technical challenges you identied in the previous question? Do you think a so-reduced Machine would be able to work as eectively within its reduced scope?

3. What legal challenges might be involved in supplying a US-based Machine with data gathered world-wide? How do those challenges change if the data is only collected in the US?