The Four Thugs Discovered On the internet 14 months before 9/11 via: ShrinkWrapped

Using open source data, stuff accessible to anyone with access to the internet, an MI team (military intell "In 1999, the Pentagon established an intelligence unit called Able Danger, assigned to seek out and identify al-Qaeda cells and members for U.S. Special Operations Command. This group reportedly used data mining from open sources.) was able to ID Atta and cohorts 14 months before 9/11. HOWEVER, they were unable to share info with the FBI as per Clintonista rules regarding the WALL set up in 1995, by then Assistant Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, to keep criminal law enforcement and MI teams separated. Jim Geraghty has your must read analysis and the short money paragraph is from Shrinkwrapped on how to go about really using the internet for data mining.

"[For more information on the data mining techniques the Able Danger team was using, Technology Review had an excellent article in March 2003, Can Sensemaking Keep Us Safe? by M. Mitchell Waldrop. This article is available on line. Scientific American has had two articles in the last few years on the techniques involved. In the March 2003 issue was a disucssion of the TIO project, SA Perspectives: Total Information Overload, and in the May 2005 issue was an article on the use of data mining the human genome, Molecular Treasure Hunt, by Gary Stix. Neither Sci AM article is available for free; there is just a brief" abstract.]ShrinkWrapped: PC & Defects in Reality Testing: Confirmation