U.S. hasn’t built the tools to ‘connect the dots’
Ian Millhiser of the Center for American Progress [disclosure: I used to work there, but do not know Millhiser] writes that a tagging system in an intelligence database that should have identified the Dec. 25 airline attacker failed—because it hasn’t been built yet.
The backbone of this web of obligations to discover, request, and share information is an automated database that ICD 501 requires the Intelligence Community to create. Part Google, part Facebook, part Microsoft Excel, such a database allows intelligence officials to comprehensively catalog their knowledge, tagging each data-field according to how it is connected to other information, and what level of security clearance is required to read it. The entry on Abdulmutallab should have been tagged to indicate that he is possibly connected to violent religious extremists, that he is a Nigerian citizen, and that he is located in Yemen. Had an NSA official, aware that Al-Qaeda in Yemen was planning to use a Nigerian citizen to commit an attack, searched the database for a Nigerian who fit the profile of a potential attacker, it is almost certain that Abdulmutallab would have been discovered sooner and flagged for additional screening before he could board a plane to the United States.
But there is a very simple reason why such a search was never conducted. According to multiple software designers involved in creating ICD 501-compliant platforms, the Intelligence Community has not yet built the IT infrastructure required to support this database. ICD 501 was issued almost a year ago, but crucial infrastructure that is essential to the directive’s functioning simply doesn’t exist.
This puts details on top of a hunch I had that a fairly simple information system could have collated intelligence about a threat by a Nigerian and about this particular Nigerian.
February 28th, 2012 at 10:14 pm
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