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Data finds data, then people find people

am 02.07.2007 von Obiter Dictum

If you plug the quoted phrase “the data finds the data” into any of the search engines, the first hit will be one of several essays on Jeff Jonas’ blog. Other evocative phrases that lead to Jeff’s blog include “perpetual analytics”, “sequence neutrality,” and “persistent context,” but while those will soon resonate once you scratch the surface of Jeff’s work, none is as broadly compelling as “the data finds the data.” As sound bites go, that one’s a keeper.


Jeff Jonas is chief scientist for IBM’s Entity Analytic Solutions. His long career in data surveillance, and recent interest in privacy-respecting data surveillance, has drawn a lot of media attention lately. In the mainstream he’s appeared in Newsweek and on NPR. In the techsphere, Tim O’Reilly blogged about Jeff’s visit to PC Forum, Dan Farber interviewed him at the Web 2.0 conference and Phil Windley wrote a detailed review of his keynote at ETech 2007.


Given our shared interests — including surveillance, analytics, security, privacy, and manufactured serendipity — it’s surprising that I only recently became aware of Jeff’s work. Of course, we’ve been working different ends of the same street. He’s focused on finding bad guys: casino fraudsters, terrorists, and others who collaborate secretly. I’ve focused on helping people who collaborate openly do so more effectively. And yet…these really are two sides of the same coin.


Here’s an example of “the data finds the data” in Jeff’s world, from his article in IEEE Security and Privacy entitled Threat and Fraud Intelligence, Las Vegas …

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