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Thursday, May 11, 2006

Open Source Intelligence

Forbes has an article about Open Source Intelligence, which basically means giving citizens ways to alert government to possible threats and sharing some threat information directly with citizens.

I think eventually tools will evolve that will enable even hunches to be part of the equation. If the way a guy is acting worries a lot of people but they can't put their finger on anything, that might be enough to at least send a cop over for a look.

James Woods actually alerted the flight crew on a flight in August 2001 about suspicious passengers who later hijacked planes on 9/11 and a report was filed with the FBI by the airline. If only we had a system that valued these reports! It seems like a pattern of activity would have been obvious to the FBI if they could only google their own data!