Data Mining In Law Enforcement

jcatcw points out a blog entry by Scott McPherson, CIO for the Florida House of Representatives. McPherson condemns the state of data sharing and data mining in law enforcement, saying that the US causes itself a great deal of trouble by focusing more on "antiterror armor and nuke-sniffing devices" than a useful information distribution network. He discusses a few such projects, and how they could have directly affected the events of 9/11. Quoting: "One of those ingenious things that actually worked, Seisint founder Hank Asher's brilliant MATRIX system, remains mired in controversy and politics. Hank showed me MATRIX just a few short weeks after the 9/11 attacks. Using law enforcement data and commercial data, all of the commercial data available in the public domain, Asher's query produced [hijacker Mohamed] Atta's photo -- and about 80 others, many of them fellow 9/11 hijackers, many of them associates of the 9/11 hijackers. It was simple data mining and algorithms, and none of the information was obtained illegally."

Comments

Re:Hindsight is 20/20

[FredThompson]

Exactly. "Connecting the dots" is always easier when you know the connections. Discovering them is a lot harder.

This guy also doesn't seem to have much knowledge of intel gathering. The idea that forward projection isn't happening is...uh...wrong, and that's all I'll say on the matter (disclaimer: I'm ex-NSA)

He also doesn't seem to comprehend the concept of misdirection, as the term is used by performance magicians.

I'd guess he can't even pronounce the name, "Sun Tzu", let alone have read the writings.

Maybe

[oodaloop]

I have a lot of issues with the various things in this article, but I'll keep it to one for now. Maybe Atta could have been arrested because of better coordination between local law enforcement. But his arrest almost certainly would NOT have prevented 9/11. Moussawi was supposed to be there that fateful day, and it still went down. One person arrested, even one of the many masterminds, would not have prevented it.

Also, no local law enforcement officer would have been able to piece together this plot from looking through one car BEFORE the event. Piloting multiple planes simultaneously into various landmarks was just too implausible to be believed before it happened. Even if John McClain himself figured it out, he wouldn't be able to convince anyone to help him stop 19 other people from boarding planes in multiple airports.

Sharing information sure beats what we're doing now, both in law enforcement and the intelligence community where I work, which is holding everything close so no one else can take credit. But let's not exaggerate the benefits here.