The United States is awash in blame games — television commentaries, newspaper editorials and opinion pieces — over two recent terror attacks: the December 30 attack by Jordanian double agent/suicide bomber, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulai al Balawi, the CIA’s “superstar asset” who killed at least five agents and wounded some 10 other people at an interrogation center in Khost, Afghanistan, and the near-disastrous attack Christmas Day by the so-called “panty bomber” — one of many satirical references to the 23-year-old Nigerian bombing suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who managed to foil airport security on Christmas Day, slipping onto Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit with explosives hidden in his underwear. Double-agent al Balawi was supposedly on his way to provide high-value intelligence on a method of taking out Osama bin Ladin’s top aide, psychiatrist-doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri; he delivered a bomb instead. Missing from both debates is any reference to the difference between data collection and “actionable information.”  Columnists and commentators — even Members of Congress who serve on the Intelligence Committee — have failed to bring it up. They chalk both episodes up to a “failure to connect the dots.”

Our computers are bursting with collected data — even from the schools. The sheer scope of what we collect is breathtaking, as this author has described at length many times. Value-and-lifestyle data (VALS), religious preferences, political opinions (or anything that might point to such), medical trivia (e.g., condition of gums at birth), magazine subscriptions, favorite shops and all sorts of other minutia can easily be used to build a dossier or profile. In the wrong hands, it could also “predict” what a person might do 10 years down the road in response to a hot-button topic or actual crisis. But such prediction requires longitudinal tracking of individuals over years, and this capability is limited pretty much to American soil — i.e., American citizens.

The larger question becomes, then, who is doing these analyses? And how is all this data “crunched” so that “dots” which might point to a terror attack can be separated and acted upon? The answer to the first question is primarily “behavioral scientists” (Ph.D.-level psychologists) with concurrent degrees in statistics. The answer to the second is that data tends to be a hodge-podge of unrelated factoids in such disarray that it would be a miracle if any portion got transmitted to an expert in a position to act on it. If there is a “rap sheet,” then yes, it might get transmitted to prospective employers, college admission offices or airline security — but bet on bureaucratic incompetence every time. We have all seen how well that works — a person with a long criminal record commits a horrendous crime.

The fact is, “data” (not to be confused with “information”) tends to be used more for political correctness than for anything else. Kids’ opinions, for example, embedded in their so-called academic tests, may wind up determining whether they get into a particular college. Or, errant thoughts, held at age 10, may lead to harassment in the college dorm, at the behest of RA’s (i.e., paid Resident Assistants who pose as voluntary counselors, look the same age as the students, but aren’t).

In any case, for purposes of terrorism, we have a lot of irrelevant information out there that isn’t “actionable” (fit to be acted upon). It is analyzed by pointy-head dorks who can’t link a bona fide red flag to real trouble. Therefore, any “dots,” as it were, are not connected, and agencies that need to know never get a heads-up.

Look at it this way:  Remember those pesky word problems you were made to solve in school math classes? They were the bane of every kid who ever had trouble with algebra. The key was not how good you were at memorizing theorems, algorithms, or solving equations. Success boiled down to ignoring the irrelevant data and keying in on the information you actually needed. Most teachers didn’t explain that little tidbit, so clueless pupils were left to muddle through.

Well, the same dilemma exists in identifying terrorism suspects. Irrelevant data is collected, the wrong people analyze it and nobody can assess its significance. So, any analysis winds up in the wrong agency’s lap, and clueless bureaucrats are left to muddle through! The bottom line is that we lack expertise to either collect or interpret data correctly and transmit it to the right people.

When Abdulmutallab’s father contacted authorities to warn them about his son’s radicalization and recent activities, these were informational elements, not mere data points, which needed to be transmitted right away. They weren’t. It was only long after-the-fact that anybody bothered to say something to the effect that, “gee, you know, we got a call from some guy’s father — a banker, I think.”

Abdulmutallab made a certain series of trips that culminated in Yemen, a known, al Qaeda-ridden region, and met with persons who appear to have included the cleric whom experts now suspect as having been in contact with Fort Hood shooting suspect, Major Nidal Malik Hasan. That should have gotten analysts’ attention.  But successive excursions to questionable locales aren’t even on the radar as data points worthy of inclusion.

When a guy purchases a one-way, cash ticket from a warm part of the world, without luggage, for transit to a freezing-cold destination, that constitutes a data point, too.  Instead, lying in a computer somewhere is probably a file revealing the condition of the suspect’s gums!

As for double-agent al Balawi, just-released, chilling videos indicate his real allegiance. Did we never consider that Soviet recruitment during its forays into the Middle East may have produced transfer value in the training of double-agents? Sharia law and beheading “infidels” may reflect an 8th-century mentality, but we underestimate our foes if we believe that al Qaeda-Taliban leaders are technologically, scientifically or psychologically unschooled.

Actionable intelligence, then, is predicated on combining tangible information, including the dreaded term “conspiracy,” which the American leftist bureaucracy applies only to conservative “right-wingers.” A parent’s warnings and repeated trips to terror-sponsoring locations (indicating conspiracy), coupled to an established set of data points, such as the four oddities surrounding Abdulmutallab’s flight — no baggage, vastly different climates, a one-way ticket plus cash payment:  That is what constitutes a real “security system.”

With all the actionable information now surfacing concerning Abdulmutallab and al Balawi, piled atop the many recent post-mortems following terrorist attacks on individuals, buildings and transit systems — in Amsterdam (the murder of Theo van Gogh), London, Madrid and New York — not to mention interconnecting “intelligence” services like Interpol, MI5, and the CIA, the “panty-bomber” should have been stopped the minute he attempted to purchase that nearly fateful ticket to Detroit, and al Balawi, “trusted” or not, should never have been able to speed through check points prior to stopping at the interrogation center, his destination.

As iterated in a January 4, 2010, article, America and most of the free world have instituted a “bothering people system” in the name of stopping criminals and terrorists. To quote the inimitable columnist Wesley Pruden, we have layered “incompetence with impotence,” on the mistaken grounds that America treats everybody equally and fairly.

In reality, we have exacerbated information-overload. We focus on easy irrelevancies and miss the big stuff. This results in goofy endeavors like pulling every fourth granny with a knee replacement out of line for closer inspection, with no other data point or actionable information to support the invasive search. This not only wastes resources, but reflects a lack of understanding concerning terror-specific data points and information. Law-abiding citizens subconsciously pick up on this — and eventually resent it. Taking aim at eating utensils and women’s makeup reflects desperation, not competence, and Americans feel no safer for the trouble, a fact reflected in every poll on the subject. 

To compound matters, we slap the wrists of real villains and radicals. Our leaders express surprise that, say, an illegal alien, who is told to appear at the local courthouse for a hearing in two weeks, simply fails to show up.  To borrow a line from Jay Leno: “Well, who could have seen that coming?”

Or we wonder at the audacity of a drug-runner, whose visa or green card is expired and confiscated, suddenly surfacing again, with a fake visa or green card, so as to have another “go” at us. With this track record, no wonder the CIA never imagined an Arab double agent!

There’s a precedent for the misguided nature of our missions in the name of “security.” Don’t we deliver reprimand after reprimand, through the United Nations (itself the brainchild of a post-War appeasement mentality), to countries like Iran and North Korea which, in turn, thumb their noses and proceed with a nuclear enrichment program — or whatever else may have sparked the reprimand?

If our leaders believe they are employing a 21st-century version of “pragmatism,” then America is in for one heck of a surprise.


Beverly K. Eakman is a former educator and retired federal employee who served as speechwriter for the heads of three government agencies as well as editor-in-chief of NASA’s newspaper (Johnson Space Center).  Today, she is a Washington, DC-based freelance writer, the author of five books, and a frequent keynote speaker on the lecture circuit. Her most recent book is Walking Targets: How Our Psychologized Classrooms Are Producing a Nation of Sitting Ducks (Midnight Whistler Publishers).

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rprew

January 11, 2010

72.201.107.33

Votes: +1

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When all else fails, regulate

The excess data is of no practical use. It is impossible to use to prevent real crime, lends itself to abuse by tyrants, is expensive to maintain, and lends to theft and misuse by the inevitable hackers.

Combine this with bureaucratic ineptitude, insane efforts to maintain an air of political correctness, a complete lack of common sense by those in charge, and blind bumbling by administration officials and you have the makings of unmitigated disaster.

DDW

January 11, 2010

173.74.213.85

Votes: +0

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If anyone can find it

H.L. Mencken wrote a scathing, and very apt, essay on bureaucracies a long time ago. Mencken was, unfortunately, a godless man, but hit the nail square on the head with his utter contempt for bureaucracies and their endless, boundless incompetence.

DDW

January 12, 2010

173.74.213.85

Votes: +1

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H.L. Mencken

"It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume...that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions. The moment they become aware of a definite citizen, John Doe, seeking what is his right under the law, they begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from him." --H.L. Mencken
and:

The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-by to the Bill of Rights.
-- H.L. Mencken

Pat Henry

January 12, 2010

189.130.2.141

Votes: +2

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The next step - foreign police

I wrote this letter today, which contains in it the news for another action point:

To the Honorable ...,

It is reported that--with little notice--President Obama has signed Executive
Order (EO) 12425, which grants complete immunity to foreign police agencies,
thereby allowing them to potentially arrest American citizens on US soil
with no constitutional protections or considerations afforded those
arrested.

This EO also effectively allows INTERPOL to successfully hide any
and all potential information and evidence it has from the American
public, for example, evidence of President Obama's birthplace.

According to the Washington Examiner, "Obama has given an international law
enforcement organization that is accountable to no other national authority
the ability to operate as it pleases within our own borders, and he has
freed it from the most basic measure of official transparency and
accountability, the FOIA [Freedom of Information Act]."

I ask you to call for a Congressional investigation into this action, and an assertion of rights under the Bill of Rights, via legislation prohibiting this kind of unConstitutional action on the part of the Executive branch. Further than this, it seems to me that foreign police agencies operating on US soil against citizens of the States is akin to an act of invasion, if not war.

This is a serious matter, and I would like an investigation and answer from your office, please.

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