For Lack of a Bot, a Plane Was nearly Lost:

[Are_grits_groceries]

by EricAZ

It's clear that the U.S. intelligence services are still in the fax machine era, when humans could sort the faxes into piles and put them in filing cabinets.
The fact that they use computers to store their files doesn't mean they are in the 21st century.
A reading of the ny times and wapo pieces on the Christmas bomber make this abundently clear that nothing moves forward without humans sorting the piles.
Once they knew there was a plot against the U.S. involving Yemen and Nigeria, they should have put a bot on the case.
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The National Security Agency four months ago intercepted conversations among leaders of Al Qaeda in Yemen discussing a plot to use a Nigerian man for a coming terrorist attack.
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A bot, a computer program that works continuously in the background, should have been looking for ties between Yemen and Nigeria. There was plenty of information in the U.S. intelligence databases for it to pick up:
--A young man with a U.S. visa traveling to Yemen.
--Alerts from the young man's family.
--Further tips about a Christmas plot.
--A Nigerian who has been to Yemen flying to the U.S. on Christmas on a cash ticket with no luggage.

It is a little bit too easy to design the bot in hindsight. Would it have needed human supervision, maintenance and continuous improvement? Yes. Should a human have been assigned to investigate the plot along with the bot? Of course. We spend a ton of resources investigating false alarms produced by burglar alarm companies. A known terrorist plot certainly deserves dedicated resources.

We lead the world in information technology. We should have the best minds at Google helping the government to get this right.
Obama inherited this problem of ineffective information sharing and a lack of pro-active electronic information analysis. Fortunately, he is just the person to do something about it.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/12/31/11574/720

Are the databases for the intelligence agencies even linked?

[notesdev]

1. The purpose of this "anti-terror" stuff isn't to stop "terrorism"

it's to render YOU afraid and malleable to commands that come from your masters.

Spread 'em, citizen! This is for your own good!

[Are_grits_groceries]

2. I know.

The terrabytes of data they collect are useless. Nobody apparently has a clue what to do with it. I think they are just in a contest to see who can collect the most.

[HereSince1628]

3. To do that the 'bot' must have access to all the data

getting all the data into an accessible, shareable form seems to be a remaining problem for US intelligence community members.

The legal boundaries that were created to separate the work of the military, the FBI, the NSA, and the CIA created a culture and an infrastructure that has invalidated the concept of shared information. Almost 10 years after the Sept 11 attacks this problem still isn't fixed.

And I think it will stay that way. I find it hard to imagine the FBI, NSA, and CIA allowing a bot they don't control to free access to their computer records.

[Are_grits_groceries]

4. I wonder if they share anything.

They should at least let a bot run through their own reams of data. They certainly can't pick through it.

[bfarq]

5. Agreed. In some respects we have "too much technology"

There is a suspects list set up by the Bush administration, but evidently it has hundreds of thousands of names (if not millions). I cannot believe there are a half million people who are willing to blow themselves up to make a final, emphatic point. And if we ask our security services to be responsible for the actions of a half million people, that is exactly the same thing as asking them to not follow any leads at all because you cannot realistically follow a half million people.

This seems more like a case of bureaucrats acting like bureaucrats. When the embassy received the warning, it didn't affect their station personally so they didn't do anything about it.

I don't know how you change the fundamental nature of bureaucracies, but it is not primarily an IT issue and anybody who approaches it as simply an IT issue will fail.

[Are_grits_groceries]

6. it is primarily a bureaucratic issue.

However, IT can help if they ever got there shit together.

IT problems aren't new. In WWII, units couldn't communicate because their radios were different and wouldn't operate together. We never learn.

[bfarq]

7. The incentives need to reinforce using the systems for the greater good

This is not an easy problem as all organizations (not just government bureaucracies) tend to isolate themselves into stovepipes. It takes real leadership to build and maintain a culture of collaboration.