October 12, 2001
Sue Kwon
Tracing the actions of terrorists can be as futile and frustrating as looking for needles in a haystack.
But now, investigators have discovered a high-tech tool that can help. It's computer software, created by a Mountain View company called Stratify, and it acts as a magnet for finding clues on the Internet.
It's like a search engine, but more powerful. It doesn't just hunt for keywords, it can search for concepts. For example, searching for documents related to terrorism brings up websites and emails that contain content ranging from anthrax to al-Qaida. Think of it as a filing cabinet with millions of documents to file -- different topics, in different languages, including those from the Middle East. The software can pick out pieces having to do with terrorism, and prioritize them in order of relevance.
The CIA paid over a million dollars for the firm's technology, as it can be directly applied to the war on terrorism. Since the attack on America, federal investigators have already learned how terrorists paid for airline tickets, how they used the Internet to communicate, and how they may have used brokers to profit from selling airline stocks short. Now the CIA can apply this software to monitor those key areas.
Investigators will still need to pick out those valuable needles from the haystack, but this technology will make those clues more obvious and easier to find.