Briefs

Cell calls, e-mail, and Web uploads are rich sources of clues on terrorism

Since September 11 more than 3,000 al Qaeda operatives have been nabbed, and some 100 terrorist attacks have been blocked worldwide, according to the FBI. Details on how all this was pulled off are hush-hush. But no doubt two keys were electronic snooping -- using the secret Echelon network -- and computer data mining.

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Markle study recommends ways to ensure that personal data won't normally be revealed, even to intelligence and law-enforcement types with proper clearances.

One tool is "anonymization." Using what's called hashing in cryptography, names and Social Security numbers can be converted into a meaningless jumble of letters and digits. Data-mining software would still be able to search and correlate separate databases -- spotting suspicious financial transactions in bank databases, for example. But personal details would remain cloaked until an agent marshals enough corroborating evidence to justify a warrant to decrypt them.

Technology will never eliminate terrorism, but techniques such as advanced data mining are some of the more powerful tools available right now for preventing future attacks.

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