An article in Information Week in January 14, 2002 discussed an interesting subject of tracking terrorists. It talked about tracing of spending by Terrorists. Things like airlines, car rentals, hotels, credit cards, telephones, banks, etc. and the vast software available. It talked in detail, I mean real detail about the ACL Services LTD. Software consultants and forensic accountants. I thought to my self after reviewing all the data and information on the Internet about NetMap, which also runs SQL and the i2 INC. software. Analysts Notebook has many customers including FBI, Treasury Departments Financial Crime Enforcement Network called FinCen. The system and all components are totally flawed, due to the possible links that may be totally invalid and waste a lot of time. The idea is good, but the problem is that these agencies dont get it and certainly neither do the program writers. And algorithms only pick up pieces of BS. Look at the intense money spent on search engines and they still bring back tons of garbage. The only way experts can do this is to think like terrorists. To hunt any animal you have to think like that animal. I cannot tell you how friggin easy it would be knowing this data published in a magazine to easily beat the system, now that it has been all laid out. Here is how they would do it. Go into cash, use a cellular phone and then give it to someone on the street or leave it on and mail it somewhere or better yet charge the battery full and duct tape it under a truck or train traveling across the country. Leave a credit card at a hotel or at a retail store where shady people hang out. The damn thing will be used for days in one city until it is over and spent, it could even travel states. You can buy a recharging telephone that you use for five days and throw away. And just think what on Earth does a terrorist need with a telephone anyway. You can use a CB, walkie talky, handy talkie or any other communication and talk in meaningless conversation containing information. Talk about the weather means to meet at location A, talk about the girl with the big breasts means meet at location B. Talk about one light means by land, talk about the lights and the sun in the same conversation means by sea. Also if you know someone is possibly listening then what is to say they give out misdirection and watch to see what happens then they know you are listening. How can a person writing algorithms thin like that, those brains are not working the same way or wired the same. Get someone who thinks like terrorism to catch them. You know maybe we should not have killed McVay. Anyway this and many other articles I have read are definitely pieces to the puzzle, but publicizing them is bad. If you have something that is working do not go into detail about it, publish it and then expect it to keep working, once it is published it will not work. So what we need to do is publish the misinformation, we want them to think we are using so they do something else, that we want them to do. Then you can continue to catch them. |
