Discussion of FBI and Computers

Here's a link to the Post on-line discussion of today's article on FBI and computers. My comment is "Reston, VA", but all the comments were on target. Unfortunately it's not a sexy subject, bureaucratic systems seldom are.

FBI and Computers

I blogged on this back when the FBI project was scrapped. (See here , here, and here--matter of fact, it may be my favorite subject.) Today the Post reviews the fiasco here--The FBI's Upgrade That Wasn't placing some of the blame on the contractor who failed to hold the FBI's feet to the fire. But I liked this quote:

"The setup was so cumbersome that many agents stopped using it, preferring to rely on paper and secretaries. Technologically, the FBI was trapped in the 1980s, if not earlier.

'Getting information into or out of the system is a challenge,' said Greg Gandolfo, who spent most of his 18-year FBI career investigating financial crimes and public corruption cases in Chicago, Little Rock and Los Angeles. 'It's not like 'Here it is, click' and it's in there. It takes a whole series of steps and screens to go through.'

Gandolfo, who now heads a unit at FBI headquarters that fields computer complaints, said the biggest drawback is the amount of time it takes to handle paperwork and input data. 'From the case agent's point of view, you want to be freed up to do the casework, to do the investigations, to do the intelligence,' he said."

It's the old problem. People will bypass your system unless it accomplishes something useful for them. That means you either have to design it well, or have a system that has the users by the short and curlies (i.e., if you don't use the system, you can't get paid).

Governmental Inefficiency at the FBI

The Post starts a series on the FBI in today's world with a look at the training program for new agents at Quantico here--Old-School Academy in Post-9/11 World:

"An obsolete computer system is also a problem for new-agents-in-training, or 'NATS,' as they are called at Quantico.

'That is one of the big frustrations here,' said Supervisory Special Agent Karen E. Gardner, chief of investigative training at Quantico. 'If the American people expect us to connect the dots, we've got to train to do it. We don't have the computer networks here to do that.'

FBI officials said the bureau plans to build a multimillion-dollar state-of-the-art intelligence center at Quantico equipped with secure classrooms and classified computers. But it won't be ready for eight years."

FDR's War Department built the entire Pentagon in a shorter time, 16 months to be exact. I guess that's the difference between the "greatest generation" and the Bush(-league) generation.

Maids for Frosh? THIAH (To Hell in a Handbasket)

From a Post story today on new dorms for college students, being built privately:

Way-Out-of-the-Norm Dorm: "GWU's new freshman dorm has a maid service to clean the bathrooms and vacuum the rooms -- no more sticky beer patches on the floor."

I knew the world was going to hell in a handbasket when the Army contracted out KP duty (everyone under 50 will have no idea what it is). But this is the icing on the cake.

Native Americans, Immigrants, and the Religious Right

The Times had a piece today, How to Make Sure Children Are Scientifically Illiterate,
with links to the recent international survey of how many people believed in evolution (US just above Turkey at the bottom of the scale) and taking off from the recent Kansas school board voting:

"A key concern should not be whether Dr. Abrams’s religious views have a place in the classroom, but rather how someone whose religious views require a denial of essentially all modern scientific knowledge can be chairman of a state school board."

While my knee jerk reaction is to agree, sometimes old age causes my knee not to jerk. Today I'm wondering: liberals usually favor Native Americans and immigration (also a big story today) and oppose the religious right, as in this piece today. But when you think about it, I suspect many immigrants (particularly the non-college educated) and many Native Americans share with the religious right a disbelief in evolution. But we forget that.

Afghan Road Rage

The Post yesterday had another interesting memo from the front. This time it was from the command sergeant major in Afghanistan, counselling his troops on the best approach to the Afghan populace. Unfortunately, they haven't yet put the image of the memo on their web site, just an
introduction to it: "Indeed, U.S. troops have earned a reputation as 'negligent, offensive, rude, callous, occupiers, hostile, disrespectful . . . you get the point.' That description is found in the memo below by a senior sergeant in Afghanistan, signaling that the Army is thinking seriously about how to operate differently -- and more effectively -- in its counterinsurgency efforts."

It struck my eye for two reasons. It reaffirms what I knew from Nam--you put guns in the hands of big young males and they will try to prove Lord Acton's maxim: "power corrupts...." But it also proves the hold of the past--it's typed in monospaced type (i.e. pica or elite). The bureaucracy has problems believing that proportional spacing upper and lower case is the most readable font.

Staging Photography

Dr. Bernstein at The Volokh Conspiracy has commented extensively on evidence of staging and faking photographs from Lebanon. I commented, and will expand here. (I should look up Susan Sontag's book on the subject, but I'm too lazy.) There's are multiple continuums of photography, with many distinctions, some of which get overlooked in the current discussion:

• at one extreme is the "snapshot", interpreted literally. The photographer is an observer with a fast trigger finger (like Col. Van Loan(?sp) shooting the Vietcong prisoner in Vietnam during Tet 68). Security camera footage and "candid camera" shots also qualify.
  
• the planned "snapshot", where the subject matter is predictable but the photographer is still an observer. Think of the famous photo of Clinton and Lewinsky in the receiving line or JFKjr under JFK's desk--the photographers knew they might get a picture from the situation and did.
• this grades over into "photo-ops" and ceremonies, where the subject plans an event to provide the predictable pictures.
  
• there's also the photographer-posed events, like wedding ceremonies, handshakes, etc. The NYTimes had a photo in connection with the completion of digging a section of tunnel for the water system. A worker had one foot on the rail. While it seemed real, I suspect it was posed, because it was too good a picture to be caught naturally.
  
• a new variation is the "realness" of the event. A wedding or a bill signing is a real event, usually but not necessarily. Realness also ties to "uniqueness"--presumably you can only get a picture once.
  
• finally there's the photographer created events, like much art.

For Lebanon, perhaps there's less toleration of "posing", if any occured, because of the importance of the subject (as compared to the tunnel digging). There's an implicit contract between photographer/media and reader/viewer--what you provide is warranted to be a true reflection of reality in all important aspects. But there's also a contract between photographer and subject--you can take the picture if it's in my best interests. Sometimes the contracts are irreconcilable.

Bureaucrats and Info Sharing

Today's NYTimes has an op-ed piece, All Terrorism Is Local, Too , by an Interpol official complaining that:

"ALTHOUGH last week’s disruption of a terrorist plot to blow up commercial airliners over the Atlantic was a great success, it nonetheless exposed a dangerous gap in global security efforts. The problem is that governments and security services in countries that arrest terrorists and announce their triumphs to the press often fail to alert national and local police forces around the world or share with them information that is crucial to protecting their citizens."

Nothing new here. It's the way people work and it's why "information sharing" is the name of a mirage.

Anti-Modern Elements Unite

Ilya Somin at The Volokh Conspiracy: has a post " on the religious right in Israel reaching out to Hamas:

[According to Rabbi Jakobovits], '[t]he Islamic world has deep concerns about the penetration of liberal, secular values and lifestyles into the Middle East. A major factor in the conflict between radical Islam and the Western world is Islam's opposition to secular lifestyle and ideology.

'The haredi community understands their sensitivities and mentality and feels threatened by the same phenomena. The haredi community could play a key role in dialogue between the West and Islam because we live in two worlds, one deeply religious and the other liberal and pluralistic. We understand that the secular mind is different from the religious mind."

Some of the religious right in this country also have deep concerns about the penetration of liberal, secular values and lifestyles in the U.S. (See this post in the Times about the push to change "dry laws".) I think it's fair to say that generally the left doesn't have such concerns, except to the extent that "liberal, secular values" overlap "free market, capitalist values"--i.e., some on the left are generally anti-Walmart, so might support the retention of dry laws.

Victory, Defeat, Lottery Wins and Stumbling on Happiness

Tom Friedman in the Times today makes a valuable point, The Morning After the Morning After: which he phrases like this:

"With every war there are two days to keep in mind when the guns fall silent: the morning after, and the morning after the morning after. America, Israel and all those who want to see Lebanon’s democracy revived need to keep their eyes focused on the morning after the morning after."

His point is that, while there will be claims of victory by Hezbollah on the morning after, the real issue is what happens after that. This ties into Dr. Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness". He says we overrate the importance of key events in the future--how happy or sad we will be when our team wins, our candidate loses, or whatever. What really happens is that the event bobs briefly above the waves, but then sinks to its proper level among all the day-to-day events of living. We were all sad (not true, but that's the historical myth) when JFK was shot. We were all ashamed when the last helicopter lifted from South Vietnam. We were all elated when Armstrong took one small step. But none of those events, in themselves, contributes to our current glee or tears. We deal with the effects of them, but they're in some perspective now.

The same will apply if we "cut and run" from Iraq. Certainly Bucheney is right to say it would be hailed as a victory for al-Qaeda, just as he's been hailing it as a victory for freedom for these many years. When Reagan cut and ran from Lebanon, it was a victory for Hezbollah. But you can win victories and lose the war. You can win a war and lose a peace. You can gain hegemony for a time and fall into decrepitude.

Of course it's better to win victories. But in the long haul what counts is the day-to-day effects, the work, the intelligence, and the morality with which one strives.