The police appear divided on the volumes of information stored on databases coming their way.
So, observes criminologist Samuel Nunn who has local Indianapolis police officers attend his class on crime and technology which he teaches every other year at Indiana University.
While "the administrative brain trust," heading the Indianapolis police department is never going to turn down data coming their way the lower level patrol officers only want stuff that is going to help them do their jobs, he says.
"The local level officers are not as impressed with all of this information generating capacity as their bosses," says Nunn.
He reports from conversations with his students that it is the common technologies embodied in the laptops, PDAs, cell phones and wireless devices in general plus applications like GPS that excites them the most.
Yes to global positioning systems or a tool that details the history of an address including the number of police calls made to it.
On the other hand, "to hell with that," is the general attitude towards more esoteric stuff like data mining, Nunn finds.
What has come to be known as intelligence led policing, itself a product of 9/11 and the counter terrorist impulse emanating from Washington seems to be receiving a mixed response at the street cop level.
An intelligence based approach involves "connecting the dots," the lack of which we are told led intelligence and policing pre-9/11 at the national level in the US to ignore credible reports from sources that terrorist attacks were about to occur.
Intelligence analysts in policing, especially in the cross country fusion centers, have become the norm as a result of that failure. Their job is to spot for what is called in the trade, "precursor crime."
But the ineptitude surrounding the Christmas bomber's ability to get onto a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit shows that the compiling of hundreds of thousands of names on various watch lists of people has not made American any safer.
The challenge, says Nunn, is that analyzing electronically stored data for potential threats "is tougher to do," than old fashioned talking to people on the street and developing leads in the solving of a crime.
"More information is clearly better than less information, but more information at some point can block you up."
80,000 people including one recently publicized eight year old boy will get pulled aside annually at US airports for special interrogation by authorities before they are able to board a plane.
But those absurdities have not lessened the love affair with intelligence based policing.
What we are dealing with here, Nunn wrote a few years ago, are billions of bytes of data on individuals circulating among police agencies. They include criminal histories, assets, debt, locations at particular times, purchase patterns, biometric identifiers (fingerprints, photographs, DNA samples), etc.
"At any given moment, thousands of inquiries are sent through dozens of regional, national, and international systems seeking answers to questions about people's identity, where they are, what they have done, or what more other agencies and agents know about these individuals. In 2005 the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC) averaged 4.5 million inquiries per day."
Meanwhile, popular American culture has played a significant role in nurturing some misconceptions about the technological capabilities of law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Nunn cites the film, Enemies of the State, as a prime example
"People's expectations get pumped by fictional treatments of crime and police technology. You can see it turning into pressure to get local police or any police agency to modernize and to get better at what they do."
In the cultural narrative depicted in movies like Minority Report and televisions shows like 24 and CSI the good guys always uncover the conspiracies concocted by the terrorist, which Nunn has dubbed as "the boogeyman of the 21 century."
Writes Nunn, "This model helps us accept 9/11 as an interruption or aberration. Looking back, we had the pieces if only someone had put them together: the plot was within our grasp. Heroic FBI agents wrote memos, villainous or incompetent supervisors ignored them or, worse, destroyed them."
If terrorists are sneaking around in an urban setting, American authorities in these films, rely on surveillance technology to root them out, Nunn observes.
"If we know a sleeper cell is operating in a city's neighborhood, the authorities can place the cell under surveillance with visual monitoring, communications interception, dialed number logs, video taping, credit card purchases, and other transaction footprints used to build a virtual sphere of information control. Alternatively, we can figure out what terrorists 'look like' through profiling, find them, surveil them, uncover their plans, and incarcerate them. We will process information to prevent terrorism."
Therefore, it is not surprising to discover that the US government under George Bush made an effort after 9/11 to encourage the making of films where potential scenarios of criminal actions were played out in a fictional format to help Washington develop real counter terrorism tactics.
Nunn says that some Hollywood productions and planned TV shows were altered or postponed after 9/11 either because of fears the depicted violent strategies could be successfully imitated by real terrorists or they had the potential to cause a public panic.
Photo of Sam Nunn courtesy of Indiana University.
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Profiling has failed us; we don’t need profiling to identify Individuals like the Christmas-Day Bomber or the Fort Hood Shooter! There is a better solution!
Virtually all media outlets are discussing whether we should be profiling all Arab Muslims; I will in the one-page explain why we don’t need profiling. Over 15 years ago, we at the Center for Aggression Management developed an easily-applied, measurable and culturally-neutral body language and behavior indicators exhibited by people who intend to perpetrate a terrorist act. This unique methodology utilizes proven research from the fields of psychology, medicine and law enforcement which, when joined together, identify clear, easily-used physiologically-based characteristics of individuals who are about to engage in terrorist activities in time to prevent their Moment of Commitment.
The Problem
Since the foiled terrorist attack by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian national on Northwest Flight 253 to Detroit, the President has repeatedly stated that there has been a systemic failure as he reiterates his commitment to fill this gap in our security. This incident, like the Fort Hood shooting, exemplifies why our government must apply every valid preventative approach to identify a potential terrorist.
The myriad methods to identify a terrorist, whether “no-fly list,” “explosive and weapons detection,” mental illness based approaches, “profiling” or “deception detection” - all continue to fail us. Furthermore, the development of deception detection training at Boston Logan Airport demonstrated that the Israeli methods of interrogation will not work in the United States.
All media outlets are discussing the need for profiling of Muslim Arabs, but profiling does not work for the following three reasons:
1. In practice, ethnic profiling tells us that within a certain group of people there is a higher probability for a terrorist; it does not tell us who the next terrorist is!
2. Ethnic profiling is contrary to the value our society places on diversity and freedom from discrimination based on racial, ethnic, religious, age and/or gender based criteria. If we use profiling it will diminish our position among the majority of affected citizens who support us as a beacon of freedom and liberty.
3. By narrowing our field of vision, profiling can lead to the consequence of letting terrorists go undetected, because the terrorist may not be part of any known “profile worthy” group – e.g., the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh
The Solution
Our unique methodology for screening passengers can easily discern (independently of race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, age, and gender) the defining characteristics of human beings who are about to engage in terrorist acts.
The question is when will our government use true “hostile intent” through the “continuum of aggressive behavior” to identify potential terrorists? Only when observers focus specifically on “aggressive behavior” do the objective and culturally neutral signs of “aggression” clearly stand out, providing the opportunity to prevent these violent encounters. This method will not only make all citizens safer, but will also pass the inevitable test of legal defensibility given probable action by the ACLU.
As our Government analyzes what went wrong regarding Abdulmatallab’s entrance into the United States, you can be assured that Al Qaeda is also analyzing how their plans went wrong. Who do you think will figure it out first . . . ?
Visit our blog at http://blog.AggressionManagement.com where we discuss the shooting at Fort Hood and the attempted terrorist act on Flight 253.
By Roy on January 27, 2010 6:45 AM
From my perspective, I see ego as the main blockage keeping Data Mining, BI, etc from being more accepted within agencies. It's easier for the cop on the street to fall back on what they learned in the Academy and from their FTO than to develop the ability to synthesize seemingly irrelevant pieces of information or adopt a new/different way of doing things. Someone once said, when referring to BI, that the intelligence isn't in the software. That pretty much sums it up.
Additionally, when you talk about sharing information, Data Mining, BI, etc, you're really talking about data. The quality of the data has to rise to maximize the value of the information being analyzed and systems need to be tuned to prevent low-quality data from being input (ex., "Eye tolled ewe sew"). GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) still holds true.