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Using Triadic Closure Property with Cellphone Metadata

https://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2013/06/07/how-the-nsa-uses-all-those-verizon-phone-records/#758b443c2d71

 

There has been much controversy regarding the ethical aspect of private cell phone metadata collected by the American government. This article covers the reasons why the NSA has been collecting the data without warrants, and why it’s more beneficial than harmful to America’s residents. The article discusses that the primary reason for which the NSA collects the data is to prevent and catch possible terrorists. It does so, by creating networks from the metadata collected and seeing if suspected terrorists have any mutual links. They did so because of the Triadic Closure Property which states that if one node has strong ties to 2 different nodes, then those 2 nodes will form a tie.  

 

The article shows an example of 2 suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists that the CIA was informed of back in 2000. The government used the data from the 2 suspects to see with whom they had been forming ties, and then found triangles that would support the Triadic Closure property. Then, the NSA added to this network by including all the people that had been linked with those that had connected with the 2 suspected terrorists, and analyzing new triangles, and so on and so forth. Eventually, they found one individual that had the most connections with everyone and figured out that he was the main leader of the AL-Qaeda group. Because there are so many nodes and ties within this network, it would’ve been very inefficient and slow to get a court order to get the data on every single person in the network. While inefficient, a slower strategy could also cost innocent lives.

 

It’s really interesting to me to see the Triadic Closure Property that we’ve talked about in class in real life. I thought that we had been taught it in terms of people relationships because it was easy to understand and that then we would eventually apply to the economy or computer systems. However, it’s really cool to see that in this case, the TCP is applied to actual relationships and was used in industry to prevent more terrorist attacks.

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