Low-TIDE

On its main page tonight, MSNBC has an interesting story: Terror Database Casts a Wide Net, by way of the Washington Post.

The gist of the article is that it documents the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, "a storehouse for data about individuals that the intelligence community believes might harm the United States."

While cataloguing terrorists and their activites is a good idea in practice, the execution...well, sucks. First of all, the sheer amount of data coming into the TIDE system is overwhelming it. In 2003, the system managed 100,000 files; now, it has 435,000. Simply put, it is outgrowing its britches faster than a kid with a thyroid problem, and the people who manage it are having a hell of a time keeping in good working order.

Now I've worked with databases, and unless you know what you're doing and have enough people to manage it, it becomes very easy to corrupt and compromise the data. I feel sorry for these guys. It must really stress them out being overwhelmed by this system.

TIDE also casts a wide net. U.S. citizen and foreigner are combined into a single database for the first time, according to the article, and that has led to many mix-ups due to similar names and appearances. Worse still, once you're on the list, it's damn near impossible to get off. This problem is most likely a combination of poor design and the overworked managers listed above. They have to sift through thousands of documents daily to see what information is critical to TIDE. As a result, some vital information can slip through the cracks and other irrelevant information can gain importance, leading to mistakes. One famous one is that Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens' wife was once stopped because her name (Catherine), when shortened, matches a famous folk-singer who converted to Islam and changed his name (the former Cat Stevens, now Yousef Islam). Yousef is banned from flying into the United States for undisclosed reasons.

Don't get me wrong. Intelligence gathering on terrorists is a good thing when done right. It sounds like this program is too bloated and ineffective at getting to the real terrorists while being all too effective at keeping those sleeper-cell senators' wives off them airplanes. For a massive database that I imagine costs billions of dollars to set-up and maintain, I'm surprised that it's not working well. Actually, I'm not surprised, but still saddened. They need to work out the kinks and get it protecting us from those international terrorists that do want to do us harm, not American citizens that just want to fly home with no delays.

~ Deep Blue

P.S. I'm purposefully not mentioning the Tony Snow/stomach surgery story. If I criticize people for making fun of Elizabeth Edwards' cancer struggle, and then proceed to make fun of Tony Snow's cancer struggle or accuse him of using it to his advantage, that would stoop me to their level. I wish him the best and hope for a speedy recovery.

Besides, there's still plenty to make fun of Zippy for, anyway.