The FBI’s Integrated Data Warehouse, or IDW, is an operational system that “[a]llows the FBI to search multiple data sources through one interface to uncover terrorist and criminal activities and relationships,” says a 2004 report by the Government Accountability Office. Records released to Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2009 under the Freedom of information Act described the IDW as a combination of database and search tool that uses link and social network analysis. “Moving forward, the FBI intends to increase its use of the IDW for ‘link analysis’ (looking for links between suspects and other people – i.e. the Kevin Bacon game) and to start ‘pattern analysis’ (defining a ‘predictive pattern of behavior’ and searching for that pattern in the IDW’s data sets before any criminal offence is committed – i.e. pre-crime),” the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote. The IDW now appears to be part of the FBI’s larger National Security Branch Analysis Center, which combines an even larger dataset, according to Wired.com. The National Security Branch Analysis Center holds data about hotel and car rental records, telephone listings, pilot licenses, and terrorist watch lists, among other sources, according to Wired.com, which also received records about the program under the Freedom of Information. “As described in the documents, the system is both a meta-search engine — querying many data sources at once — and a tool that performs pattern and link analysis,” Wired.com reported.
Source: Wired.com, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Government Accountability Office