As an addendum to my post about information systems and the politics of the failed attack on Dec. 25, here’s a nice paragraph from Dan Ryan at Sociology of Information.

The president was furious about the failure of the system to see “the red flags” and intelligence agencies are reported to have said that the information they had was “vague but available.”  The problem is that flags are not, in general, a priori red.  Presumably, some smart people are thinking about how systems see and things like that; hopefully, they don’t just think of it as “connect the dots.”

Ryan points out that many of the new measures we know about are designed to create more information.

In the framework from my previous post, the problem here is that the machinery built to process information failed. I would not want to fall into the trap Ryan decries of complaining that “dots” went unconnected. I do think however that a process that better collated the available information might have brought this threat to wider attention. So it’s not “connect the dots,” but rather “collate and evaluate” information.

Then again, a radio report last night (BBC interviewed someone clearly from a conservative organization in D.C.) pointed out that gate personnel were working from the wrong no-fly lists. This person seemed motivated by some anti-Obama talking points, but if part of the statement was factual, both the information and response systems were broken.