"we’re essentially looking for needles in haystacks. "

[babylonsister]

Too Much Information
Matthew Yglesias


Something that always bugs me in the various debates about surveillance and torture is the tendency to implicitly assume that more information is always better. According to Karen DeYoung and Michael Leahy, the Abdulmutallab screw-up is a case study in the extent to which this isn’t the case:

When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s father in Nigeria reported concern over his son’s “radicalization” to the U.S. Embassy there last month, intelligence officials in the United States deemed the information insufficient to pursue. The young man’s name was added to the half-million entries in a computer database in McLean and largely forgotten.

The lack of attention was not unusual, according to U.S. intelligence officials, who said that thousands of similar bits of information flow into the National Counterterrorism Center each week from around the world. Only those that indicate a specific threat, or add to an existing body of knowledge about an individual, are passed along for further investigation and possible posting on airline and border watch lists.

“It’s got to be something that causes the information to sort of rise out of the noise level, because there is just so much out there,” one intelligence official said.

And there’s the rub. Out of the six billion people on the planet only a numerically insignificant fraction are actually dangerous terrorists. Even if you want to restrict your view to one billion Muslims, the math is the same. Consequently, tips, leads and the like are overwhelmingly going to be pointing to innocent people. You end up with a system that’s overwhelmed and paralyzed. If there were hundreds of thousands of al-Qaeda operatives trying to board planes every year, we’d catch lots of them. But we’re essentially looking for needles in haystacks.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. And, we're producing more needles with our endless, and useless, wars.

[snagglepuss]

2. I don't buy that because the UK denied him a visa to return as a student.

Its not just the fact the father gave a warning its the fact that he was denied a UK visa as well as his trips to Yemen. One would think that if a person has been denied a UK visa that should be in the system.

[global1]

3. So Is It The UK That Screwed Up And Didn't Put It In The System Or......

the U.S. for not requesting that the UK put things like this into our system?

I posted this elsewhere - but it probably fits here as well:

Really Now - We Have Police Forces All Over The Country.....

in every state, city or small burg. We have security guards at malls, stores, factories. We have security camera's everywhere. And guess what. Crime is still being committed. People still get away with murder, burglary, etc.

Point is - no matter how many precautions you take. No matter how much law enforcement you throw at this. No matter how many security camera's you have pointed in every direction. Nothing is perfect and you can't stop everything. Something or somebody will always get through and commit a crime.

Same goes for these security steps taken by the TSA and every other similar outfit all over the world. Nothing is perfect. We have to acknowledge that and get on with life.

We are again having an overreaction to this incident.

Would someone else please make some news - because this has been all that has been talked about on the cable news shows since it happened.

Come on people - get a life.

[snagglepuss]

4. The UK govt has stated info is in the system and that information is

available to US. Its a shred system. The US dropped the ball. ITs not an over reaction at all. This event was preventable if existing procedures had been followed.