Obama: Software Flaws Let Christmas Bomber Get Through

We are being told that institutional failure or human failure (i.e. "someone needs to pay") is responsible for the inability to connect the dots between intelligence fragments, and therefore a dangerous person with explosives being allowed to board Northwest Airlines flight 253. But according to Danger Room blog, it is really a simple matter of crappy software:

Obama: Software Flaws Let Christmas Bomber Get Through: "
Crappy government software — and failure to use that software right — almost got 289 people killed in the botched Christmas day bombing.

“Information sharing does not appear to have contributed to this intelligence failure; relevant all-sources analysts as well as watchlisting personnel who needed this information were not preventing from accessing it,” the White House noted in its review of the incident. The problem was in the databases, and in the data-mining software. “Information technology within the CT [counterterrorism] community did not sufficiently enable the correlation of data that would have enable analysts to highlight the relevant threat information.”

You bet it didn’t. Government search tools weren’t even flexible enough to handle simple misspellings. As the White House review notes:

A misspelling of Mr. Abdulmutallab’s name initially resulted in the State Department believing he did not have a valid U.S. visa. A determination to revoke his visa however would have only occurred if there had been a successful integration of intelligence by the CT [counterterrorism] community, resulting in his being watchlisted.

This is a problem that commercial software firms largely solved years ago. (Try typing “Noa Schactmann” into Google, and see what comes up.) How it could persist in the CT community, I just don’t understand.

In a memo to his agency chiefs, President Obama ordered the Director of National Intelligence to “accelerate information technology enhancement, to include knowledge discovery, database integration, cross-database search, and the ability to correlate biographic information with terrorism-related intelligence.”

All of which will be helpful. But analysts have to actually use the tools. That didn’t happen in the Christmas attack. “NCTC and CIA personnel who are responsible for watchlisting did not search all available databases,” the White House noted.

The Department of Homeland Security did run Northwest Airlines flight 253’s passenger manifest against terrorism databases. But only after the flight took off. Ugh.

[Photo: U.S. Marshalls]"


Is there some reason we can't get this right??? Do we need to point our fingers in the wrong direction in order to score political points? Let's fix this problem and get it right this time.

We Knew it was Coming: The Airport Crack Scanner

Danger Room reports:

The “underpants bomber” has renewed calls for new and more invasive security measures. Already, there’s a push to install scanners that show travelers’ naked bodies through clothing, using either millimeter wave or backscatter X-ray imaging. But even those scanners might not have caught the terrorist who nearly brought down Northwest flight 253.

That’s why one company is trumpeting a sensor that can supposedly “detect substances such as explosive materials … hidden inside or outside of the human body.” First step: Actually build a human-sized machine.There has already been one report of a suicide bomber carrying explosives internally. Many sources, including the BBC, carried an early report suggesting that Abdullah Hassan Al Aseeri adopted the new tactic of “carrying explosives in his anal cavity” for an attack in September. The target, a Saudi prince, survived, but Aseeri was reportedly blown in half by the blast. Later reports suggest the explosives were actually sewn into his underwear, but security experts believe there is a real danger of “internally carried” bombs, a technique used for years by drug smugglers.Nesch, a company based in Crown Point, Indiana, may have a solution.

It’s called diffraction-enhanced X-ray imaging or DEXI, which employs
proprietary diffraction enhanced imaging and multiple image radiography (.pdf).

Rather than simply shining X-rays through the subject and looking at the amount that passes through (like a conventional X-ray machine), DEXI analyzes the X-rays that are scattered or refracted by soft tissue or other low-density material. Conventional X-rays show little more than the skeleton, but the new technique can reveal far more, which makes it useful for both medical and security applications.

“Our patented technology can detect substances such as explosive
materials, narcotics, and low-density plastics hidden inside or outside
of the human body,” company CEO Ivan Nesch claims. DEXI allows
explosives to create contrast, he adds, so it would be able to detect
both the underpants bomber and the shoe bomber before they boarded.

The image shows how a conventional radiograph does not detect two packets of “illegal materials” concealed in soft tissue, while they are plainly visible in when DEXI technology is used.

Of course, X-ray scanners always bring up a concern over the level of radiation involved. One of Nesch’s corporate slogans is “Less radiation, more information,” as DEXI uses significantly less radiation than other approaches.“It is far less than what a passenger would receive simply by flying on an airplane across the United States,” says Nesch. “Passengers who are imaged using DEXI security will be exposed to approximately 50 times less radiation than that of a conventional radiograph. ”

Have we heard this before?? It is completely safe, and it will enhance security? It will preserve privacy?

The first thing I thought when I heard about bombers carrying explosives in their underwear and body cavities, I knew privacy would go down the toilet. People would be screaming for full body scans and body cavity searches in as many airports as possible. Of course, any pretenses about modesty from the "family values" right would immediately be forgotten in the name of security. Which is what we see now. And the advent of the "crack scanner" seems to point us in this direction.

Bend over, America!