Disable Danger

Our buddies at Conspiracies R Not Us are doing some impressive work. John Ray put together an excellent discussion of Able Danger, the Pentagon's data mining program that some claim identified Mohamed Atta prior to his arrival in the United States.

Unfortunately for the conspiracy theorists, another key element of any data mining operation is having a large population to choose from. In the business world where data mining is a practical tool, often an entire “set of all consumers of X” are analyzed – potentially, millions of people.(5) Unfortunately for the Able Danger crew, their target population (extremists who rely on the Internet for dissemination of propaganda and for organizational coordination) had only had access to the Internet for about two and a half years, since 1996 when the Internet first exploded on the global stage.

Excellent analysis of a complicated issue!

Joe Biden Blows Chance for SLC Endorsement

Unfortunately the fruitcakes have learned to be less, well, fruity, when approaching the candidates these days, so Joe doesn't get a chance to go "mano-a-mano" with the "Truthers"; instead it's "Do you think we've learned all there is about Able Danger?"

Able Danger is apparently going to get some significant discussion in Loose Change The Final Insult. The advantage the Troofers have here is that a lot of people like Able Danger for reasons of their own. Many in the conservative blogosphere embraced the Able Danger story because it shifted the blame for "letting" 9-11 happen to the Clinton administration. Biden may like it for similar reasons, given that he's running against Hillary. But the story has never really made any sense to me, starting with the obvious: Why was Atta supposedly a member of the "Brooklyn Cell"?