Terrorist Tracking Technology
By Michael P. Tremoglie (06/25/2004)
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.
Michael P. Tremoglie is a freelance writer whose is completing his first novel, "A Sense of Duty," and an ex-Philadelphia cop
http://www.americandaily.com/article/2048
U.S. commander happy with Osama stuck in the hills
24 Jun 2004 13:57:04 GMT
By Akram Walizada
BAGRAM, Afghanistan, June 24 (Reuters) - The U.S. special forces commander who has led the hunt for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan said on Thursday he will be satisfied if the al Qaeda chief spends the next 30 years living in fear on the run.
Colonel Walter Herd, departing commander of 4,000 special forces soldiers from seven countries, said he could not predict when bin Laden would be caught, but saw the Saudi-born guerrilla leader running out of hiding places.
"We could find him this afternoon, we could find him a year from now, we could find him 10 years from now," Herd told reporters on Thursday at a change-of-command ceremony at Bagram Air Field, a major U.S. base north of Kabul.
"But what I think we can do is to change the conditions so that he is no longer welcome here in Afghanistan.
"And if he spends the next 10 years, or 20 years, or 30 years, running through the mountains of Afghanistan looking over his shoulder, that's OK."
U.S. military had raised hopes of catching bin Laden this year, something that would boost President George W. Bush's chances of re-election.
Herd, who headed the joint special operations task force, said he did not know if bin Laden or Taliban leader Mullah Omar were still in Afghanistan.
The operations commander of the 20,000 U.S.-led foreign force in Afghanistan, Major-General Eric Olson, told the handover ceremony it was "on the verge of winning" the war in the country.
"There are going to be some huge victories won in the weeks and months ahead," Olson said.
But Herd was making no predictions, and stressed that the special forces strategy of winning over local populations to close off the mountain valleys to al Qaeda and its allies would need time.
"If they don't have a safe place to go to, then they run through the mountains until they either get tired or run out of food."
U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan in late 2001 in pursuit of al Qaeda and its leader bin Laden, who are blamed for the September 11 attacks on the United States.
The special forces claim to have killed more than 100 militants from al Qaeda, the Taliban and the allied Hezb-i-Islami group since last September.
But Herd said the key lay in having an effective Afghan security apparatus in place to vanquish insurgents.
"We are doing that slowly but surely, but it's a long process," he said. "Instead of trying to catch one insurgent at a time, we are changing the temperature of the water so they can no longer survive in the area."
Aid organisations which have come under attack while trying to work in the provinces, and the United Nations, complain about worsening security ahead of elections due in September.
More than 800 people have died in mostly militant-related violence since last August, the bloodiest period since the Taliban's fall.
However, Herd said he believed security had improved, and the increase in the number of encounters was partly down to U.S.-led forces making more contact with militants.
"Little by little, security is coming to this country," he said.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/ISL100504.htm