Military survelliance program aims to detect biowar attack

[Declan McCullagh]

>Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 10:24:51 -0500
>To: politech at politechbot.com
>From: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com>
>Subject: Military survelliance program aims to detect biowar attack
>
>
>*******
>
>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.  [...]
>
>********
>
>Date: Tue,  9 Jan 2001 22:58:56 -0500
>Message-Id: <200101092258.AA586350668 at mail.cipherwar.com>
>Mime-Version: 1.0
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>From: " Scully at cipherwar.com" <Scully at mail.cipherwar.com>
>To: <declan at 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 at 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
>
>--
>Founder
>Cipherwar: Information Warfare for Free Thinkers
>http://www.Cipherwar.com
>--