Information gathering and the war on terror | 02.09.2006 | 12:58:12 | Views: 4397 | ID: February 9: The federal government is designing a computer network and supporting programs to gather information through the internet and then synthesize that information to find potential terrorist groups, plots or sleeper cells, the Christian Science Monitor reported Thursday. That information has come on the heals of remarks made by President Bush who said today intelligence gathered after the attacks on 9/11 were able to foil plot by an al-Qaeda-member organization which wanted to fly a plane into the tallest building in Los Angeles the BBC reported earlier today. At the center of the intelligence and information gathering, the Monitor reported, is a "little-known system called Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE)." The information gathering system is part of a larger R&D project within the Department of Homeland Security called the "Threat and Vulnerability, Testing and Assessment" portfolio which received nearly $50 million this year in federal funding. Some of the software being used by the system is still in development while other parts are "operational" the Monitor found. "It is the federal government's latest attempt to use broad data-collection and powerful analysis in the fight against terrorism." Development of information gathering programs is critical in the war on terror, government officials say. Increasingly, terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda use the internet to plan and coordinate attacks. The Jamestown Foundation reported this week in its online edition that "From evidence found in jihadi forums, the US military has its work cut out." "Since the explosive growth of the virtual jihad community after the loss of Afghanistan," the posted article read, "the number of radical websites mushroom[ed] from less than 100 to several thousand today..." In order to cover such a growing amount of information and internet traffic, the ADVISE program "and its analytical tools would be used by other agencies to look for terrorists." "All federal, state, local and private-sector security entities will be able to share and collaborate in real time with distributed data warehouses that will provide full support for analysis and action," a 2004 workshop report said, the Monitor reported.
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