I would recommend your student tries the Search feature on SWC and views some of the more obvious threads: Intelligence, Law Enforcement etc. There is a thread on social networking already:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=9512

Have a look at David Omand's book 'Securing the State', which attempts to think aloud about the issues and he has been advocating greater use of personal data, he calls it 'protected information' IIRC:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Securing-Sta.../dp/1849040788

There are immense issues raised in the thesis, not just the I.T. aspects which are seemingly being "sold" to us as a "golden bullet" by many vested interests. One European academic project has tried to grapple with the issues of Detection Technologies, Counter-Terrorism Ethics, and Human Rights. Their website is:http://www.detecter.bham.ac.uk/

Two other websites that IIRC feature thoughts on the themes are:http://icsr.info/blog and http://raffaellopantucci.com/tag/terrorism/

What the proposal avoids IMHO are the arguments over whether an active public can help in CT, as seen in several threads / posts or whether new technology - the virtual domain - provides enough help?

Somewhere there is a public comment on a German CT scheme that using data analysis provided a host probable suspects, not one when investigated was a suspect.