Homeland Security Finds Human Vetting More Effective than Computers

Homeland Security Finds Human Vetting More Effective than Computers

The words “extreme vetting” are part of our everyday vocabulary now that President Donald Trump has introduced not one, but two, executive orders on immigration from six particular countries. As explained by the President and his team, extreme vetting will hope to include the scanning of potential United States visitors’ social media accounts.

A study by the Department of Homeland Security this week revealed that in December 2015, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services ran a pilot scheme monitoring the social media accounts of visitors both manually and automatically.

The computer programs sued were not named in the report, but the tests were repeated in April and August of 2016 using different software.

“In reviewing the pilot, USCIS concluded that the tool was not a viable option for automated social media screening and that manual review was more effective at identifying accounts,” the report states.

The report based its findings on “low match confidence” because the resulting accounts identified by the software did not always match up with the applicant’s profiles.

The conclusion that old-fashioned methods work best could prove difficult for the DHS, as an army of workers would be required to monitor accounts of the millions of foreign nationals that visit the states each year. The department said that at this moment, neither the government nor the private sector “possessed the capabilities for large-scale social media screening.”

Social media screening began as voluntary submission under former-President Barack Obama, but President Trump wants to press ahead with screening all parts of a person’s identity in accordance with “extreme vetting.”

John Kelley, Secretary of Homeland Security, said that social media screening should be mandatory and that visitors should expect to have to provide passwords to their accounts.

The ACLU has since sent Kelly an open letter condemning plans to demand social media passwords. They point out that if the United States goes forth with such plans, other countries will feel pressure to follow suit, therefor putting American data at risk.

Featured

  • Integration Imagination: The Future of Connected Operations

    Security teams that collaborate cross-functionally and apply imagination and creativity to envision and design their ideal integrated ecosystem will have the biggest upside to corporate security and operational benefits. Read Now

  • Smarter Access Starts with Flexibility

    Today’s workplaces are undergoing a rapid evolution, driven by hybrid work models, emerging smart technologies, and flexible work schedules. To keep pace with growing workplace demands, buildings are becoming more dynamic – capable of adapting to how people move, work, and interact in real-time. Read Now

  • Trends Keeping an Eye on Business Decisions

    Today, AI continues to transform the way data is used to make important business decisions. AI and the cloud together are redefining how video surveillance systems are being used to simulate human intelligence by combining data analysis, prediction, and process automation with minimal human intervention. Many organizations are upgrading their surveillance systems to reap the benefits of technologies like AI and cloud applications. Read Now

  • The Future is Happening Outside the Cloud

    For years, the cloud has captivated the physical security industry. And for good reason. Remote access, elastic scalability and simplified maintenance reshaped how we think about deploying and managing systems. But as the number of cameras grows and resolutions push from HD to 4K and beyond, the cloud’s limits are becoming unavoidable. Bandwidth bottlenecks. Latency lags. Rising storage costs. These are not abstract concerns. Read Now

  • Right-Wing Activist Charlie Kirk Dies After Utah Valley University Shooting

    Charlie Kirk, a popular conservative activist and founder of Turning Point USA, died Wednesday after being shot during an on-campus event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah Read Now

New Products

  • 4K Video Decoder

    3xLOGIC’s VH-DECODER-4K is perfect for use in organizations of all sizes in diverse vertical sectors such as retail, leisure and hospitality, education and commercial premises.

  • Luma x20

    Luma x20

    Snap One has announced its popular Luma x20 family of surveillance products now offers even greater security and privacy for home and business owners across the globe by giving them full control over integrators’ system access to view live and recorded video. According to Snap One Product Manager Derek Webb, the new “customer handoff” feature provides enhanced user control after initial installation, allowing the owners to have total privacy while also making it easy to reinstate integrator access when maintenance or assistance is required. This new feature is now available to all Luma x20 users globally. “The Luma x20 family of surveillance solutions provides excellent image and audio capture, and with the new customer handoff feature, it now offers absolute privacy for camera feeds and recordings,” Webb said. “With notifications and integrator access controlled through the powerful OvrC remote system management platform, it’s easy for integrators to give their clients full control of their footage and then to get temporary access from the client for any troubleshooting needs.”

  • QCS7230 System-on-Chip (SoC)

    QCS7230 System-on-Chip (SoC)

    The latest Qualcomm® Vision Intelligence Platform offers next-generation smart camera IoT solutions to improve safety and security across enterprises, cities and spaces. The Vision Intelligence Platform was expanded in March 2022 with the introduction of the QCS7230 System-on-Chip (SoC), which delivers superior artificial intelligence (AI) inferencing at the edge.