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December 08, 2005
Able Danger: Trusting The New Technology
AJStrata on the genesis of the Able Danger project and the establishment of the program by General Hugh Shelton :
So I can envision this upstart, prototype data mining methodology being given the evil eye by the old guard. Why do you think the FBI and FAA computer systems belong in museums representing 1990 technology? Able Danger was a demonstration effort to show the power of data mining, therefore it was not supposed to actually be ‘operational’ - a conceptual state a system must attain through process and paperwork, not simply capability to produce results.
This reminded me of a somewhat similar situation in which a warning generated by a radically new technology was misunderstood and ultimately ignored, at great cost to our country. In the early morning hours of December 7, 1941, two operators at the Opana Mobile Radar Station identified the massive Japanese formation of aircraft that would soon attack Pearl Harbor. After carefully verifying that the radar set was working properly, they telephoned the warning to the newly-established Information Center. Due to a lack of coordination between service arms (due it seems to the newness of the operation, not inter-service rivalry) the personnel who could have identified the radar blip were absent.
Making correct conclusions when dealing with new technology is never easy. Adding an element of ferocious political maneuvering to the mix, as in Able Danger, makes the task even more difficult.
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