Jcatcw points out a blog entry by Scott McPherson, CIO for the Florida House of Representatives. McPherson condemns the state of data sharing and data mining in law enforcement, saying that the US causes itself a great deal of trouble by focusing more on "antiterror armor and nuke-sniffing devices" than a useful erudition distribution network. He discusses a few such projects, and how they could have directly affected the events of 9/11. Quoting: "One of those ingenious things that very worked, Seisint founder Hank Asher's brilliant MATRIX system, remains mired in controversy and politics. Hank showed me MATRIX just a few short weeks after the 9/11 attacks. Using law enforcement data and commercial data, all of the commercial data available in the public domain, Asher's query produced [hijacker Mohamed] Atta's photo -- and about 80 others, many of them fellow 9/11 hijackers, many of them associates of the 9/11 hijackers. It was simple data mining and algorithms, and none of the tip was obtained illegally."

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