http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-31/to-defeat-terrorists-do-a-little-research-in-the-library-scott-helfstein.html By Scott Helfstein Bloomberg Aug 30, 2011 The information glut that marks the 21st century is evidenced in some unexpected places. Last month, my organization, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, released a report that sharply disputed conventional wisdom about terrorism along the Afghanistan-Pakistani frontier. The report argued that the Haqqani Network, a border- spanning tribal group with deep ties to Pakistan’s government, had been more influential than the Taliban in aiding al-Qaeda’s rise. How did we support this thesis, which has vast implications for reconciliation efforts in the region as well as for the distribution of U.S. military aid? Not with data culled from clandestine operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas or from Osama bin Laden’s computer hard drive. The report was based on the public statements and writings of individual extremists over the past 30 years. Rather than ferreting out secret information, researchers merely took extremists at their voluminous word. It seems terrorists, too, are susceptible to the syndrome known as Too Much Information. [...] _____________________________________________________________ Register now for the #HITB2011KUL - Asia's premier deep-knowledge network security event now in it's 9th year! http://conference.hitb.org/hitbsecconf2011kul/Received on Tue Sep 06 2011 - 01:43:47 PDT
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