I'm guessing that it's a timeline with some useful visualizations that allow the viewer to see patterns based on all the available data.
They'd have income/employment/tax data, your "network" as defined by google, facebook, the phones #s you dial, the phone #s that call you, family, classmates, etc.
They'd also have information about (and tools to easily search for) internet community involvement, travel history, banking history, credit score, and TONS of clickstream data.
The challenge for the government is that there is so much data on each person (available already or available with a few automated warrants) that creating tools to facilitate automated and human pattern recognition are crucial.
There are likely lots of metrics (formulated similarly to something like a credit score or a life insurance policy quote) that are updated automatically and indicate the chances that you'll do various things.
While it's very unlikely that most of us are of any interest whatsoever to authorities, the power of this information is when it can be used on someone else connected to you who is a target. Suppose the system flags 500 individuals as potential domestic terrorists. There is humint needed to rule these out as quacks, which the intel in your dossier might be useful for.
I think that what we have to keep in mind is that the state having these powers is tolerable now only b/c we are still in the infancy of this kind of technology and those in power haven't really developed a clear path toward totalitarianism yet, though now and then they start to come close.
They'd have income/employment/tax data, your "network" as defined by google, facebook, the phones #s you dial, the phone #s that call you, family, classmates, etc.
They'd also have information about (and tools to easily search for) internet community involvement, travel history, banking history, credit score, and TONS of clickstream data.
The challenge for the government is that there is so much data on each person (available already or available with a few automated warrants) that creating tools to facilitate automated and human pattern recognition are crucial.
There are likely lots of metrics (formulated similarly to something like a credit score or a life insurance policy quote) that are updated automatically and indicate the chances that you'll do various things.
While it's very unlikely that most of us are of any interest whatsoever to authorities, the power of this information is when it can be used on someone else connected to you who is a target. Suppose the system flags 500 individuals as potential domestic terrorists. There is humint needed to rule these out as quacks, which the intel in your dossier might be useful for.
I think that what we have to keep in mind is that the state having these powers is tolerable now only b/c we are still in the infancy of this kind of technology and those in power haven't really developed a clear path toward totalitarianism yet, though now and then they start to come close.