So Google is better than US intelligence?

Telegraph Blogs (U.K.) ^ | January 8, 2010 | Toby Harnden

[Schnucki]

Check out this passage from the unclassified six-page summary of the President Barack Obama’s review of the intelligence failures that led to the attempted attack by the Knicker Bomber on Flight 253 on Christmas Day:

Mr. Abdulmutallab possessed a U.S. visa, but this fact was not correlated with the concerns of Mr. Abdulmutallab’s father about Mr. Abdulmutallab’s potential radicalization. A misspelling of Mr. Abdulmutallab’s name initially resulted in the State Department believing he did not have a valid U.S. visa.

So this means that the US government’s computers apparently don’t have an equivalent of Google’s “Did You Mean?” tool that picks up misspellings and finds results for similar words.

If it had been realised immediately that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has a valid US visa then presumably the alarm bells would have begun to ring weeks before he actually flew – but they believed he had no visa because the State Department database or whatever database it was could only recognise a particular version of an Arabic name.

That’s reassuring, isn’t it?

[hennie pennie]

*ping*

[The Sons of Liberty]

So this means that the US government’s computers apparently don’t have an equivalent of Google’s “Did You Mean?”

I believe that Google is also staffed with highly trained "techies". The TSA is staffed with affirmative action hires, that don't care. Even if the computers said "did you mean?" you have to have intelligent personnel to review and interpret the information and take action.

[bcsco]

If it had been realised immediately that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has a valid US visa then presumably the alarm bells would have begun to ring weeks before he actually flew – but they believed he had no visa because the State Department database or whatever database it was could only recognise a particular version of an Arabic name.

'Presumably' is the operative word in this paragraph. I don't presume anything when it comes to these incompetents.

[Pecos]

So, all a bad guy has to do to slip past the much-vaunted TSA is to misspell his name? Sounds like a pretty cheap strategy to implement. Truly asymmetric warfare.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Mark Steyn made the point that our security should be turned over to Amazon. They remember you name nine years after you order a cook book.

[Cacique]

btt

[Peter Horry]

“They remember you name nine years after you order a cook book.”

Better yet, turn it over to College Alumni Associations, they remember you after 30+ years. Also have recently gotten calls to refinance a 1972 VA loan, all it takes is the proper motivation.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Good point. I still get letters from Iowa City, yet I'm contributing to Hilsdale, MI.