Less Repeated Themes
Countering Terrorism through Information Privacy Protection Technologies is one of my favorite articles to have read yet. While it spends more time on information technologies which analysts should be (already are?) using, it still highlights that balance can be struck between securing the homeland against terrorists while also ensuring privacy of citizens. There were a couple of phrases, or themes, which particularly caught my attention.
The first was, “the goal shouldn’t be to tear down these silos, but to punch holes in them and enable collaboration across agencies when appropriate and advantageous.” I wonder if the Intellipedia is sufficient to fill this need, or if the authors had envisioned a more collaborative arena? One such that would allow for across departmental debate and discussion and analytical collaboration. Obviously, little is known about the Intellipedia’s content, nature and structure, but it often appears more as reference guide of pooled ideas rather than as encouraging a collaborative intelligence community.
The second theme is that of pattern producing models. I wholly agree with the authors that ‘modeling tools play a crucial role in countering terrorism’. Ideally, statisticians, terrorist experts, and dynamics modeling experts should work closely to begin working on pattern searches that are based in theories. It would be interesting if critical pathways for terrorist schemes – at least on a simplistic level – could be found and utilized to help drill down through the information. There is certainly a lot of information out there, and more precise patterns would assist in purging some of the irrelevant information.