I read the Times most mornings when I go for coffee. There's usually a copy lying around by the time I get there. But I don't read it so much for the news. I've always already heard all the big stories the day before on the web. But I'm still interested in how they report things.
Anyway, today there is a short story about the FBI's computer systems. I hadn't heard this one, but I simply cannot believe it. Who's in charge here? Apparently agents don't enter their reports in digital form! They just enter a summary of the reports and provide a few key words. So the way it is set up there is no way to search the body of all those reports. You can only search on the keywords!
Well that's the whole freakin' problem right there. What do they expect. Are they trying to do a shitty job? Everybody at the top should be fired immediately if this is true (I'm sure they'll get right on that now that my feelings are known.)
Let me repeat: FBI agents can not search on the full text of other FBI agents reports. Yet google can index the full text of the entire internet and provide advanced search capabilities to millions of users a day for free. Why isn't there a greater outrage about this? I think you could safely assume that 9/11 would not have happened if this problem had been fixed. Agents were aware (and suspicious) that lots of muslim men were taking flight courses well beforehand. But they couldn't put their information together. Can somebody up there please call google? You know, like before the next attack.
sure someone cares, the fbi. from almost the moment the towers fell theyve been complaining that they need more money to upgrade their computer systems. sounds like they need to upgrade their thinking first.
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Anyway, today there is a short story about the FBI's computer systems. I hadn't heard this one, but I simply cannot believe it. Who's in charge here? Apparently agents don't enter their reports in digital form! They just enter a summary of the reports and provide a few key words. So the way it is set up there is no way to search the body of all those reports. You can only search on the keywords!
Well that's the whole freakin' problem right there. What do they expect. Are they trying to do a shitty job? Everybody at the top should be fired immediately if this is true (I'm sure they'll get right on that now that my feelings are known.)
Let me repeat: FBI agents can not search on the full text of other FBI agents reports. Yet google can index the full text of the entire internet and provide advanced search capabilities to millions of users a day for free. Why isn't there a greater outrage about this? I think you could safely assume that 9/11 would not have happened if this problem had been fixed. Agents were aware (and suspicious) that lots of muslim men were taking flight courses well beforehand. But they couldn't put their information together. Can somebody up there please call google? You know, like before the next attack.
- jim 6-08-2002 9:48 pm
sure someone cares, the fbi. from almost the moment the towers fell theyve been complaining that they need more money to upgrade their computer systems. sounds like they need to upgrade their thinking first.
- dave 6-09-2002 2:05 am