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Saving Lives with Design
valdean writes "Last year, the White House declassified an August 2001 intelligence brief entitled: 'Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.' Among other things, the brief mentions that Bin Ladin 'wanted to hijack a US aircraft.' So why was it ignored? Graphic designer Greg Storey thinks part of the reason is poor design. He set out to modify the format of the original document into a more legible one."
This was all over in the summer of '01. I think the problem was that the focus was on the Genoa summit, they thought the hit was going to be there, so then after nothing happened there was a lull. I remeber Drudge carrying this report on his big font banner in middle to late August for a few days.
MIHOP/LIHOP. They (neocons) made/wanted it to happen. The Bush regime needed a "catalysing event" to wage war and institute repressive measures in the name of "fighting terrorism". (think Pearl Harbor) It didn't take long for them to then conquer Iraq and establish their 14 military bases at a cost of $300 Billion. Now they are beating the war drums against Iran and threatening the judiciary. Why was it ignored indeed.
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The president's response at the time, to either style of report: "Oh, it's just some crazy named Bin Laden. As if terrorists could attack the USA."
Have you already forgotten the mindset of the US government before the tower-plane collisions?
I have read that government officials thought that Osama wanted to force prisoner release by commercial aircraft highjacking; perhaps of the mullah behind the original World Trade Center bombing.
On the other hand, I was aware of a Norad exercise that was to address using hijacked planes as missiles. Right after the release of the 9/11 Commision Report, some bright, informed soul at the Arizona Republic ran a brief story about the planned Norad exercise which it turned out had never actually been carried out.
If the Norad exercise had been carried out, the lines of authority that were completely lacking 9/11/2001 and caused so much confusion and wasted time would have been documented and perhaps thousands of lives could have been saved.
I figure that if I, a retired citsen could have been aware of the concept of using high-jacked commercial aircraft as missiles, there was no excuse for high government officials to have been unaware of the concept.
Lots of high-ranking heads spent too much time in posterior dark places.
That would make sense if this was the first they had ever heard of bin Ladin. By the time of this memo, he had been openly at war with the U.S. for over five years, and had been slaughtering people in ever-more spectacular attacks designed for maximum civilian damage for even longer. He had demonstrated his deadliness and determination to destroy American interests around the world; they goddamn better have taken a memo like this seriously. I don't give a shit what font it is in, this is an important memo. That they missed it -- and ignored the bin Laden threat completely during most of 2001 -- is not excusable.
It was ignored because, well, they wanted it to happen. An excuse to deepy entrench the US in the Gulf region was needed.
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It sounds like he's trying to one-up Edward Tufte, who had published a well-read report on the slide presentation that led to the Columbia Disaster. I guess we could use a few more such public analyses before people will begin to realize the reach of what falls under "Interface Design" and how critical it is our functioning in the complex system we've created.
THE INTERFACE IS THE INFORMATION. If you don't have an interface, you don't have any information. Period.
Incidentally, I can think of a few reasons not to implement some of the changes that Storey suggests:
- Bolded and highlighted text may draw the eye toward material that was incorrectly analyzed; or the burdern of analysis may fall upon the reader of that (original) memo.
- The threat level may not be something that is established, but rather something that is established through decisions that come from this document
Whether these kinds of metrics are appropriate in the case of the President is unknown to me. My main here is to illustrate that Storey's ideas, though thoughtful, are perhaps a bit sensational.
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-shpoffo
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This is a really good demonstration of the inherent danger in design. The revamped design, pretty though it is, forces the author, rather than the recipient, to reduce the content into a numerical risk assessment and three key facts, exactly the sort of activity that takes time and is almost impossible to get anyone to agree on. Furthermore, as the designer says, 'Nothing in the text is emphasised (presumably ignoring the italics), making it difficult to scan'. Well, that's fine if you don't want people to read your document. It's how press releases are designed. But it's a really, really bad idea to allow documents that need to be read to be 'easy to scan'. And highlighting the author's idea of what the 'key words' is worse, as it's likely to distort the apparent meaning of the document. Colour still doesn't work well in fax machines.
erm... if that were all it was... just a conspiracy thoery... then it would be easy to dispell just by releasing the footage from all the surveillance cameras that was seized shortly after the event... after all, if there was nothing to it, then the camera footage would show a 757 hoot footing it on a collision course with the Pentagon... but then again, the conspiracy theorists would be claiming that the authorities had had plenty of time by now to doctor the footage...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
While it does seem there was plenty of incompetance to spread around, along with an alergy to following up on any work Clinton had in progress, you can't really know if the WTC attack would have happened or not if Clinton was in office, although I'd tend to at least guess that the odds would have been reduced 10% or so.
I do fault the Bush administration for incompetence and corruption, but I do it more so since 9/11 than before it. There is a large section of the population that is easily led and manipulated. You tell a lie often enough and with a convincing enough voice and lots of people will believe it, either because they want it to be true or fear it will be. People are much faster to believe the worst about about another than the best.
If you watch FOX news you have pretend balance, with such an obvious slant anyone could recognize it, yet it is effective. CNN is better, but not by a great deal. This complete and utter idiocy where you throw two sides out that do nothing but attacks and call that news is damaging and certainly not helping to inform the populace. Yes hearing both sides of the argument can be informative, but when they just do cheap attacks and arguments with the thinnest or no logic whatsover it is quite sad.
Frankly I wish they would replay Jon Stewarts Crossfire program a few more times, since for once someone told the truth.
I really gotta stop ranting about American politics. I'm stuck here, and will be for awhile. I just pray that some people with some sense get into power and, more importantly, the populace gets more informed somehow. Democracy is no better, and sometimes perhaps worse than other forms of goverment if those that chose the leaders are easy to manipulate.
Here's a thought: You could actually work just a wee bit to find answers some answers for yourself. The logical, and popular, places to start would be 9-11 Commission and the important followup Intelligence Matters.
Of course, during this period where everyone gets to choose their own facts, you can choose to accept what is obvious to rational observers. Or not.
Well, I remember when I started using internet, I wandered over to FBI web server and found there a web page simmilar to this. It was something like 1998 ... and yes, it did mention Bin Ladin in top ten most wanted people. I expect that a report delivered to White House having this name in, should ring a bell no matter what the rest of the report says.