Oh What an Interconnected Information Space We Weave
"It is now clear to us that there are bits and pieces of information that were in the possession of the U.S. government in advance . . . that, had they been assessed and correlated, could have led to a much broader picture and allowed us to disrupt the attack... Or certainly to know much more about the alleged attacker in such a way as to ensure that he was on . . . a no-fly list."
The information, the official said, "was in some instances about the individual in question and his plans, some of it was about Al Qaeda and its plans, some of it was about potential attacks during the holiday. It was not obvious or readily apparent that all of it spoke to this attack -- but in fact, we believe it did," he said.\
unnamed senior administration official
Well, it's trivially easy to work backwards. Knowing the man, what he did, who his contacts were, and the information that was brought to our attention about him, how clear it all is now how the links were interconnected, what they implied, and what steps should have been taken!
I don't know for sure exactly how hard it is to work forward. It might not be exponentially hard, but then again, it just might be.
And I do know that I worked on a software project on the periphery of exactly this kind of problem just a few years ago, for almost exactly this purpose (connecting the dots, so to speak). And if the technology that was trying to be developed then is in use now, then FSM help us. The CIA might as well use goat entrails (okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but not by a lot).
This is a damned hard problem, and any official, be he Bushite or Obamite, who tells you otherwise, is almost certainly just covering their anonymous political ass.
The information, the official said, "was in some instances about the individual in question and his plans, some of it was about Al Qaeda and its plans, some of it was about potential attacks during the holiday. It was not obvious or readily apparent that all of it spoke to this attack -- but in fact, we believe it did," he said.\
unnamed senior administration official
Well, it's trivially easy to work backwards. Knowing the man, what he did, who his contacts were, and the information that was brought to our attention about him, how clear it all is now how the links were interconnected, what they implied, and what steps should have been taken!
I don't know for sure exactly how hard it is to work forward. It might not be exponentially hard, but then again, it just might be.
And I do know that I worked on a software project on the periphery of exactly this kind of problem just a few years ago, for almost exactly this purpose (connecting the dots, so to speak). And if the technology that was trying to be developed then is in use now, then FSM help us. The CIA might as well use goat entrails (okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but not by a lot).
This is a damned hard problem, and any official, be he Bushite or Obamite, who tells you otherwise, is almost certainly just covering their anonymous political ass.