Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 10:24:51 -0500 To: politech@politechbot.com From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> Subject: Military survelliance program aims to detect biowar attack
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http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2671596,00.html
Catching The Bug Before It Kills By Doug Brown, Interactive Week January 7, 2001 7:26 PM ET
Web sites and a broad sweep of electronic databases are being targeted by the military for a vast surveillance project aimed at detecting incidents of bio-terrorism before it's too late. [...]
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Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 22:58:56 -0500 Message-Id: <200101092258.AA586350668@mail.cipherwar.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii From: " Scully@cipherwar.com" <Scully@mail.cipherwar.com> To: <declan@well.com> Subject: DARPA's new Bio-Surveillance program
URL: http://cipherwar.com/news/01/darpa_baa0117.htm
BAA 01-17: A Biological Defense System or an Infringement of Privacy? ....Jan.10.2001
In addition to the usual threats against the United States' national security, a relatively new threat has arisen - the threat of biological terrorism. There have already been attacks using biological agents in other countries and possibly against the US military but these have been on relatively small scales. The possibility of a nation-wide or even global attack is made possible by the relatively small doses of the agent needed, the communicability of the resulting disease and the misdiagnosis of disease as either the common cold or flu. For a comprehensive report regarding the threat of biological terrorism and especially that of anthrax, please read Cipherwar's article, entitled, "Anthrax: Are We Prepared" by visiting http://www.cipherwar.com/news/00/anthrax_meta4.htm .
To address this growing threat, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Information Systems Office (ISO) has issued a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) to solicit research proposals for a Bio-Surveillance System project designated BAA 01-17. The initial proposal was published December 27, 2000 in conjunction with a relatively detailed fact sheet. A final report is currently being prepared by personnel at DARPA and is said to be available shortly. The article that follows is not complete but includes all the information that is currently available. Stay tuned in the coming months for updates as they become available.
The main objective of this Bio-Surveillance program is to mine information from non-traditional sources in the hope that the combination of information will alert officials to a biological attack faster than would be possible relying solely on diagnoses made by medical personnel. Due to the fact that several infections with biological agents manifest themselves with initial symptoms resembling those of the flu or the common cold, the possibility that a terrorist attack could go unnoticed for a lengthy period of time is one of the biggest dangers associated with such an attack.
As time passes, those infected with the biological agent die and the disease can continue to spread throughout the population without any treatment, quarantine or vaccination systems intact. Traditional disease surveillance has relied upon the watchful eye of medical professionals who recognize a disease, order the appropriate tests to confirm or refute the diagnosis and take the appropriate course of action to treat the illness. However, during the aftermath of a terrorist attack, the inherent delays in the lengthy process of diagnosis would result in countless deaths.
A typical theoretical example follows. Within 24 hours following anthrax infection, an individual begins to feel flu-like symptoms. If the infected person actually visits a doctor and if the doctor does not know that there has been a release of anthrax into the environment, the doctor would diagnose the person as having the flu and send them home. Meanwhile, the individual becomes sicker and sicker and soon becomes refractory to antibiotics designed to treat anthrax. There is a short window of time that the medication will actually work and once past that, the infected individual has a 99% chance of dying. Thus, with the aid of a surveillance system, the epic results of a biological terrorist attack could be minimized by detecting the attack and taking appropriate measures before many lives are lost.
DARPA, in support of their proposal says that "surveillance for covert biological warfare and biological terrorist activities is needed to counter the threat. If an event occurs, surveillance is needed to identify the presence of the pathogen or the initial indicators of disease as soon as possible so that a rapid response can be implemented." In fact, DARPA conducted a simulated project that showed that with proper bio-surveillance, an abnormal health event caused by a terrorist attack could be detected days before identification by the medical community. These critical days could save an entire city's population.
The Bio-Surveillance system will collect data from grocery stores' sales, pharmacy databases, school absentee databases, animal surveillance networks, veterinarian and health care records, and apply the information to an abnormal disease detection algorithm that will be able to identify a biological attack. The Bio-Surveillance System program intends to demonstrate that it is feasible to 1) develop an integrated system using diverse military, government (federal, state and local) and commercial databases from geographically dispersed locations, 2) glean applicable data from these databases while maintaining patient privacy privileges, 3) analyze the data to discern abnormal biological events from normal epidemiology patterns and 4) provide alerts to the appropriate DOD emergency response infrastructure. BAA 01-17 is only in the initial planning stages. DARPA holds lofty goals for their proposed surveillance system. The vision for the Bio-Surveillance Project is to develop the information technology necessary to alert the DOD of any clandestine bio-agent release within the CONUS, in time for adequate response. The envisioned network would gather and integrate information from non-traditional health information sources...and state-of-the-art bio-sensors for a city with a large DOD population. The system would support real-time epidemiological analysis and autonomous alerts of any anomalous or unusual health event in the DOD military or civilian population. Once a possible anomalous event is detected, the system would provide the capability for a medical expert to quickly analyze the possible cause and isolate the infected population for timely treatment. As for money, $24 million of taxpayers' money will fund the five-year DARPA project that will be a system to protect primarily Department of Defense military and civilian personnel. What about the rest of the public?
The United States and its allies need some sort of counter to the very real threat of biological terrorism. However, is the development of yet another public surveillance program really the answer? Especially a public surveillance program that holds as its primary objective to protect DoD military and civilian personnel? Over the recent years, a few undercover surveillance programs have been discovered and people in general seem appalled at the notion that they are under the watchful eye of Big Brother. BAA 01-17 may become the first "publicly-acknowledged" surveillance system, one that is known about while it is in action. Combing the currently available information on the Bio-Surveillance System, there is very little mentioned about protecting the public's privacy. Perhaps the issue of privacy is a lower priority or even an afterthought to protecting the nation and especially DoD employees from a terrorist attack. We should be weary of such a system and approach it with extr! eme caution.
Contributed by meta4@cipherwar.com
For More Information: http://www.darpa.mil/iso/bios/baa01-17..htm
Sources: http://www.arpa.mil/iso/bios/baa01_17faq.html http://www.darpa.mil/baa/BAA01-17.htm http://www.darpa.mil/iso/bios/baa01-17..htm http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2671596,00.html
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