The Office of the Director of National Intelligence undertook no data mining activities from February through December 2009, according to an annual ODNI report.

However, notes Steven Aftergood, who writes about intelligence and security policy for the Federation of American Scientists, ODNI excludes from data mining what it calls "link analysis."

Data mining attempts to identify patterns in large data sets, whereas "link analysis" uncovers links between a known suspect "and potential associates or other persons with whom that subject is or has been in contact," the ODNI report states.

Although it has not directly engaged in data mining, it does have underway two efforts within its Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity that could be used for pattern based analysis in the future, the report states.

The Knowledge Discovery and Dissemination program would allow analysts to "utilize large, complex, varied and unfamiliar data sets to produce actionable intelligence in a timely manner," and research activities are expected to begin this June, according to the report. KDD would utilize "real-world, classified data sets that are large and complex," the report adds.

The Automated Low-level Analysis and Description of Diverse Intelligence Video (ALADDIN Video) effort seeks to allow analysts to quickly locate video of interest within large and complex video data sets, the report states. "ALADDIN's technologies, if successful, will help to automate a filtering process that is currently performed manually by analysts. This is not ‘data mining,'" the report states. ALADDIN research is set to begin this August.

For more:
- read the ODNI report (.pdf)
- see the IARPA website, go directly to its KKD page, or see the ALADDIN Video FBO posting for a proposers' day conference
- read Steven Aftergood's blog post on the report

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