Posted on 01/08/2005 7:02:01 PM PST by LaserLock
IBM will soon be keeping a close eye on you thanks to its purchase of SRD (Systems Research and Development).
SRD, a small privately-held company based in Las Vegas, is best known for its ERIK and NORA identity management products. This spooky software collects data about an individual from various sources and is billed as a "customer relationship management" tool. SRD has been in business for 20 years and will now be part of IBM's Information Management software unit. No financial details about IBM's buy of SRD were revealed.
NORA ( Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness) is without doubt the most compelling product in SRD's arsenal. It's described by IBM as a great product for figuring out all you ever wanted to know about a customer.
"It's important to know who you're dealing with-and who they're dealing with," IBM says on its website. "Repeatedly, NORA has proven that a map of an individual's relationships provides a more complete view of their risk or value to your organization - whether they're a customer, prospect, or employee."
Ah, but how far does this map go?
"When it comes to customer relationship management, there's much to be gained in knowing that the person opening a new bank account is the brother of your best customer. If, on the other hand, security is the value proposition, then your ability to detect suspicious connections between individuals internal and external to your organization significantly decreases the threats of fraud, collusion, conflicts of interest, or even of the potential for corporate sabotage or terrorism."
NORA can search through databases of addresses, social security numbers, phone records and individual's contacts. It has been used, for example, by the gaming industry to track down cheats and note who the cheats talk to at casinos.
Real heart-warming stuff.
It's lovely to think that a piece of software can tell you when a huge customer's CEO has a birthday and then automatically send him a present based on his most recent purchases at Amazon.com. SRD's products, however, are less flattering when you think that they could lead to uncomfortable guilt by association scenarios. The Feds have proven that they have trouble dealing with digital evidence, and one wonders if IBM or its customers will be any better at the task. ®
Ping!
AS long as it is certified as being black-helicopter free I'm content ...
Paranoia.
Management wanted to retire, so sold at whatever deal they could get.
Now IBM will bury the intellectual property in their morass of compartments and managers.
There was a group called The Monitor Company, from Boston, I think, that would do this sort of work in the 80s. They worked like detectives and spent time on location at competitor's to gather info.
Your mother was right -- don't hang around wif the wrong crowd.
In its mass of information management tools, sold to customers directly and used for the management of internal business.
But, some on FR think grocery store loyalty cards are Big Brother trying to figure out how much toilet paper we buy.
Maybe they could find some way to integrate it with their subsidiary VeriChip.A canine information mining system - I love it!
Secure a ton of info on people's dogs (and presumably cats too) and pet-related habits.
(Verichip is that pet-implantable ID technology isn't it?)
BTTT
Will they ever figure out I hang around FR?
And if "they" do, would it be good or bad?
I'm very proud of many freepers, though there
are a good many contributors I'd just as soon not be
associated with...
You talkin' 'bout me? lol.....jk
Not just pet I.D., they're a competitor for the medical chip implant market.
So, you can or you can't use them in your pet?
Not just VeriChip, combine this (NORA and the like) with VeriChip. Mix in a little nanotechnology (http://www.foresight.org/) for example and a little quantum dot tech (http://www.qdots.com/live/index.asp) and watch the tin foil hatters lose their minds.
you can, it's a little ID/GPS tracking thing they also can hold pets or people's medical records. pet records in pets, peoples records in people.
GPS tracking? Really?
How did they work the power budget out?
Where does the Lat/Long coordinate pair obtained from a GPS fix go?
I thought it was the larger, two-part Digital Angel product that incorporated a GPS receiver and a GPRS or CDPD modem for position fix back haul into fixed infrastructioure for display on a web site ...
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