[Travis McGee]

I think #4 is what we are already familiar with, iris scan, face mapping etc, but speeded up in universal networks with cameras everywhere.

I can only guess about #11.

#5 is a biggie, that is the mega data cruncher that figures out what is "normal" human activity in many situations, and then looks for subtle patterns which indicate terrorist plannng activity. That's why they want to collect everything about everybody: for advanced data mining. The more data in, the more supercompputers crunching it, the better is what they believe.

[Poohbah]

The term "agents" in item #11 refers to software agents--basically, things like the "bots" used by altavista, google, and infoseek to catalog the Web. The idea here is to make these programs smarter at finding certain categories of information.

#5 isn't just looking at a crowd of people--it's looking at things like financial transactions ("Why is 'Islam Without Borders,' an group supposedly engaged in humanitarian relief efforts, buying enough ammonium nitrate to fertilize every farm state of Kansas, enough fuel oil to heat every house in Canada for a week, and renting 1,728 Ryder trucks, all at the same time?")

I don't know if this idea will work. Technically, it's a daunting challenge. Assuming the techies do their jobs...then the folks who OPERATE this system will have to know what they're doing.