Dr. Jerry Lucas, Telestrategies
November 14, 2011
An Exclusive Interview from ArnoldIT.com
In October 2011, I had a chance to talk informally with Dr. Jerry Lucas, an expert in telecommunications and the owner of the Telestrategies conference series. I was quite interested in his views about content processing. His interest spans text and the large volumes of information that accrue in modern telecommunications systems. One theme which threaded thought his observations was the large volume of data that is now available in digital form. I don’t want to denigrate the commercial services who chit chat about “big data” for figuring out which soap detergent is perceived as having a “smiley face” on the brand. I do want to point out that the Telestrategies’ conferences are designed for law enforcement agencies, intelligence professionals, and practitioners who either work as advisors to agencies or as product developers. Put that your AtomicPR water balloon, insert XML tags, and spam the connected world.
The full text of the interview with him appears as part of the Search Wizards Speak series, which is the largest, free collection of first person narratives about information retrieval. The full text of my conversation with him is at this link. The master index for the series is available on the Beyond Search Web site at Wizards Index.
I wanted to highlight two points Dr. Lucas made in our discussion.
First, I asked him, “What is your view of the challenges flows of digital information pose to government professionals working in law enforcement or the intelligence community?” He told me:
First and foremost are the lack of updated laws creating new lawful interception mandates. In the US the last technical mandate law passed by Congress was the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. CALEA was passed in 1994 and enacted in 1995. The key players providing today’s communication services used by bad guys—specifically, Apple, Facebook, Google, Second Life, Skype, etc.–are not covered by CALEA mandates nor any other interception assistance laws. These companies have to respond to court orders but these companies don’t have to deploy any infrastructure features to assist law enforcement. I think this is a challenge which must be resolved. A second big challenge law enforcement and intelligence professionals is the lack of educational and budget support by their senior management. As you know, today’s senior management developed professionally in their careers depending on voice calls and e-mail messaging as their prime electronic communications tools. Today many senior managers still make phone calls and send e-mails during working hours and likely watch TV during off hours. So here is my point. To understand what’s needed to police a community you have to live in that community. I call this Policing 101. But Today’s senior managers usually don’t live in the Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Second Life and other cyber space environments as part of their every day activities.
Second, I asked Dr. Lucas, “You have a unique vantage point on some quite interesting technologies. If you were to advise a developer at a large firm specializing in digital information analysis, what would be the three most important features the company should include in their next product release?”
I know you are aware of the phenomenal requirements regarding data privacy or who can access data in a law enforcement agency. Privacy policies and safeguards for open source search in an enterprise can be very lax with regard to a law enforcement agency. Data gathered on a bad guy from a communications service provides under a court order is not fair game for searching over time by law enforcement professional. Those data may have to be erased over time and more. So compliance is an essential characteristic of many products and service. Second, product feature to consider is interoperability with legacy lawful intercept and intelligence gathering products. Interoperability is very important. So called “fork lifts” are rare events in this space and no one in this space wants to see an additional screen introduced in the central monitoring center. I want to emphasize that the user interface must be simple and shouldn’t require the user to be highly computer literate.
I found that the Apple influence is extending beyond the iPhone and iPad crowd. For more of Dr. Lucas’ insights and views, point your browser to the Dr. Jerry Lucas Interview. Information about Telestrategies is located at www.ISSWorldTraining.com.
Stephen E Arnold, November 14, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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