The Pentagon’s research arm that fosters futuristic technology for
the military will soon begin working to surpass current abilities of
commercial web search engines. Yet, once it masters the “deep Web,” the
agency doesn’t say much about what comes next.
The Defense Advanced Research (DARPA) said its “Memex”
project will be able to search the far corners of internet
content that is unattainable by modern, mainstream search
engines, offering DARPA “technological superiority in the
area of content indexing and Web search on the Internet.”
DARPA said earlier this month in its solicitation announcement
for Memex proposals that the system will initially be used to
counter human trafficking, which often thrives in web forums,
chat rooms, job postings, hidden services and other websites.
To root out trafficking operations within the invisible corners
of the web, commonly referred to as the “deep web,”
Memex (a melding of "memory" and "index”)
“will address the inherent shortcomings of centralized search
by developing technology for domain-specific indexing of Web
content and domain-specific search capabilities.”
With Memex, DARPA hopes to achieve the ability for decentralized,
automated, topic-precise searches that can leverage image
recognition and natural language technology.
DARPA has asked researchers to develop advanced web-crawler
software to reach sites and resources that have sophisticated
crawler defenses. Memex operators would then be able to access
the indexed domain-relevant content with much greater precision
and ease than is currently possible.
Memex, DARPA says, will be first employed against human
trafficking, which, “especially for the commercial sex trade,
is a line of business with significant Web presence to attract
customers and is relevant to many types of military, law
enforcement, and intelligence investigations.”
DARPA says that dark places online where trafficking occurs
enables “a growing industry of modern slavery” that can
be stopped with Memex capabilities.
“An index curated for the counter trafficking domain,
including labor and sex trafficking, along with configurable
interfaces for search and analysis will enable a new opportunity
for military, law enforcement, legal, and intelligence actions to
be taken against trafficking enterprises,” DARPA’s
solicitation announcement reads.
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| DARPA Internet Search Engine |
Yet while DARPA mentions the usefulness of such technology for
law enforcement and investigative purposes regarding human
trafficking – basically, crimes few are opposed to stopping – it
does not address the myriad other uses Memex would offer the US
military, government intelligence operations, or police actions.
Amid the recent disclosures of government spying via the National
Security Agency’s operations, the topic of complete surveillance
over the entirety of the web is a sore subject. Thus, DARPA says
it is "specifically not interested in proposals for the
following: attributing anonymous services deanonymizing or
attributing identity to servers or IP addresses, or gaining
access to information which is not intended to be publicly
available."
How DARPA would catch traffickers without
“deanonymizing” someone, though, the agency does not
explain. Nor does it address just how far it wants to out anyone
hiding in the deep web for legitimate reasons, whether they are
journalists, whistleblowers, activists, and the like.
The Memex project takes its name from a 1945 article in The
Atlantic titled “As We May Think,” by Dr. Vannevar Bush,
head of the White House Office of Scientific Research and
Development. Bush envisioned a "device” that could be
used for finding and categorizing the world’s information, acting
as a supplement for the human brain.
“In a nutshell, Bush wanted to mimic how the human brain
thinks, learns, and remembers information,” writes
Motherboard. “Which is exactly what artificial intelligence
researchers at the DoD and in Silicon Valley are trying to do
now, to glean better insights from the unruly army of big data
being collected by web giants and the military alike.”
The Memex project is expected to run over the next three years,
with proposals due in April.
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