The reality is that we do not have a technical problem. While I won't pretend to understand the advanced arithmatic above, I suspect that the mathmatical solution to predicting behavior is not so far from a reality. Looking at a person, observing their behavior and applying those behaviors against a model of a "terrorist" (No, Liles, this is not a boolean - more of a sliding scale, that someone is more likely than someone else to be a baddie). In turn we can then focus our efforts on those people. Naturally, this type of system will seldom capture the angry guy who just goes off and drives his SUV through a university or a nut case who is otherwise "ok" and shoots up Ft. Hood, but it _should_ provide us a list of people to observe more closely, and so we can stop searching cub scouts.

However, there is a policy issue and a people issue at hand here. Regardless of what we want to believe, our government doesn't like to share. This is often promoted by contractors who are protecting their own turf (Data makes you king, and sharing data is seen as weakening your realm). In turn, we find that various agencies can "collect" on someone, and failure to share is not met with a firing squad.

Conversely, I posit that data entry is annoying at best, and hard at worst. Given human nature and *our* desire to find the most leisure whenever possible, people don't bother to collect on the details. I flew through RDU this morning at 0600. The woman in front of me was meddling with her personal toiletries. The TSA rep told me I could jump into another line to bypass her. However, our practice should have been to report her by name on this behavior. Was it criminal? No. Suspicious? Not really. But when taken in conjunction with other behavior, it could show trends or patterns that might indicate negative or dangerous behaviors in the future. Sadly, my crack TSA agent instead made a smart assed comment and I was on my way.

The reality is that during a survey of any data store in the intelligence or C2 arena, we might be surprised at how many fields of data we ask for and how few are actually completed. It is really hard to do trending when 80% of your database is blank.

So, at the end of the day, the reality is that the ideas you all are promoting are sound mathematically and technologically, and if used to highlight individuals, organizations or even regions, these can be effective to help us plan. But until we are really serious (I mean firing some senior people in both the Government and Industry), I will just continue fighting the good fight and hoping that we get lucky again.