http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1104/111804h1.htm
Shane Harris
A Defense Department-funded think tank has designed a concept for a computer system that could help U.S. intelligence agencies identify and interpret clues of an impending terrorist attack.
The RAND Corp. of Santa Monica, Calif., last week proposed a multifaceted system of networks and electronic databases to sift through huge volumes of information—including information about people, places, events and financial transactions already obtained by the government—in order to discover the most relevant signals of a planned attack.
"An information search that could take dozens of intelligence analysts days to complete could be carried out within hours" by the system, which RAND calls Atypical Signal Analysis and Processing , said John Hollywood, the lead researcher. "This is like giving someone who is looking for a needle in a haystack an incredibly powerful magnet."
