Aims of Data Mining in the Counter-Terrorism Context

As with enterprise management as noted above, intelligence and investigatory work in the field of counter-terrorism also faces the problem of information overload. One of the primary themes of the findings of the 9/11 Commission was that information pertaining to the unfolding of the 9/11 plot was available within intelligence files and databases, but that analysts had failed to put all the information together. Thus, in the same way that it was able to assist businesses in analyzing internal information, data mining seemed to offer the ability to bring such intelligence information together quickly and automatically to the benefit of overwhelmed analysts.

In at least some instances, the use of data mining in intelligence and law enforcement merely represents the application of information technology to the same tasks that such agencies have traditionally performed in the past. Thus, data mining may allow these agencies to work in a much faster, more efficient, and perhaps more organized manner than in the past. The ability of data mining to reveal associations that analysts might not think to inquire after may have also offered some hope that data mining would not only assist in performing traditional investigation tasks but could uncover connections or leads that traditional techniques would not. (download doc from detecter.bham.ac.uk)