Terrorist Tracking Technology
By Michael P. Tremoglie (06/25/04)
The analysis, interpretation, and distribution of intelligence has become a controversial topic of many since 9-11 and the debacle of the Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction search. Questions about how intelligence is gathered and communicated are asked in the halls of Congress and on Main Street. The public needs to know more about how the conclusions of the intelligence community are determined.
Intelligence involves the processing of reams and reams of information. For example, a pen register is an electronic device that records all the telephone numbers dialed by a particular phone line. Investigators use it to determine who the object of the investigation is contacting. Literally thousands of numbers are recorded, collated, and analyzed.
Imagine doing this manually.
Yet, intelligence analysts are routinely tasked with assembling and interpreting such tremendous amounts of data. They have to detect relationships where none seem to be. They have to extrapolate activities and events from current activities.
The technology revolution is influencing how intelligence is analyzed. Currently available are “link analysis “ software programs that furnish investigators with comprehensive graphic representations of information.
In the case of the pen register, this software enables investigators to identify clusters of phone calls by various suspects and discern communications patterns comparing them to known events. All of this can be done in minutes instead of the days or weeks required by doing it manually.
Programs like this are a tremendous help to analysts who have to compare phone numbers, addresses, ownership records, and names of people and entities. Needless to say this a daunting task - especially if it involves foreign languages. Communicating this information in a comprehensible fashion is even more complex. Done manually it is cumbersome and subject to significant errors. The ultimate report is often difficult to understand.
However, with new software programs like Analysts Notebook it is possible to collate all the information collected about a particular investigation. The data is then arranged and graphically illustrated indicating all the existing links. By using this technology, an analysis of the activities and relationships of a subject being investigated is done much more efficiently.
Another benefit to this type of software is that it fosters the analysts’ intuition because they no longer have to be concerned with constructing the actual chart. They can devote their efforts to the analysis and interpretation of the data. (I have prepared such charts without the benefit of technology. It is an onerous task.)
Among the organizations that use Analyst’s Notebook are the DIA, DEA, FBI, Customs, Treasury and United States Postal Service and the U.S. Army. This technology was mentioned during the 9-11 Commission hearings as a factor that helps facilitate intelligence interpretation and distribution.
Although this software has been available since the early 1990’s, it has evolved. Several refinements have been made. In fact, one program being developed claims to be able to predict terrorist attacks.
Applied Systems Intelligence claims to be creating a program that will take certain elements of past terrorist incidents and create a profile of a pattern of activities preceding such incidents that will alert authorities if repeated.
For example, if records of people taking flight lessons are collated with those taking flights on a certain day, and compared to immigration records, perhaps it would have been a red flag that a possible terrorist plan was being implemented.
This is an ambitious adventure and will require significantly more research. However, it is an example of what is possible in the war against terrorism. A war, that if not for the technology, would endanger innocent lives because innocents would not only be the victims of terrorists they would also, inadvertently, be the victims of anti-terrorist activities.
Perhaps the most important aspect of this technology is that it makes the information and analysis more accessible. If there has been one consistent theme about the intelligence lapses prior to 9-11, it is that the sharing intelligence analyses is just as important as the analyses themselves. While the major difficulty regarding sharing intelligence was existing law the lack of a efficient method to do so also hampered the effort.
Now that the public has been made aware of the problems concerning the collection, collation, analysis and interpretation of intelligence data, policymakers will be more anxious to investigate innovations to accomplish this task. The new technology has been a benefit to the efforts to thwart terrorism. Yet there are many more still available that need to be reviewed.
(Printer friendly version) Email: Michael P. Tremoglie
