“The intelligence was posted, but the right analyst never found it among the terabytes”
Excellent quote about the consequences of complexity at the end of Karen DeYoung’s Washington Post story on January 7th: After attempted airline bombing, effectiveness of intelligence reforms questioned
The 2005 quote is from Russell E. Travers, who is a deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center:
“If an organization posts something to its webpage, it can claim to have shared information,” …. “Whether the right people know the information/analysis is there, and actually make use of it, is entirely another matter.
“Indeed, we’ll almost certainly be dealing with precisely this problem in the post mortems of our next intelligence failure [again, this was written in 2005]; the relevant intelligence will have been posted, but the right analysts never found it among the terabytes of available information.” [my emphasis]
How much is a terabyte?
One Terabyte = 50,000 trees made into paper and printed
Ten Terabytes = Printed collection of the U. S. Library of Congress
