ZoneFlood

Writing at his blog Global Guerillas, post-modern conflict thinker John Robb writes:

To me, it’s pretty clear that the people working on this program aren’t as smart as they think they are. Some top level thinking indicates that this will quickly become a rat hole for federal funds (due to wasted effort) and a major source of infringement of personal freedom. Here’s some detail:

• It will generate oodles of false positives. Al Qaeda is now in a phase where most domestic attacks will be generated by people not currently connected to the movement (like we saw in the London bombings). This means that in many respects they will look like you and me until they act. The large volume of false positives generated will not only be hugely inefficient, it will be a major infringement on US liberties. For example, a false positive will likely get you automatically added to a no-fly list, your boss may be visited (which will cause you to lose your job), etc.
• It will be expanded to include to monitor domestic groups other than al Qaeda. As we have already seen in numerous incidents across the US, every group that opposes the war or deals with issues in the Middle East will eventually fall under surveillance. Eventually, this will begin to bump up the political process by targeting groups that are politically active in the opposition party.