Getting the message

Much of the sophisticated surveillance equipment that the United States used to win the Cold War is hardly tailored to the "war" on terrorism say intelligence observers both inside and outside the government. The article examine the question of how the intelligence community is going about pursuing its goals. Some idea may be gathered from the projects that DARPA and the National Science Foundation are funding at universities and corporate research centers. While Congressional critics of the pervasive surveillance entailed by DARPA's Total Information Awareness program have threatened its funding, the agency's project list still provides a good benchmark. This program includes a slew of projects to introduce collaborative software for what is called structured argumentation. This process allows intelligence analysts to make their assumptions explicit when working together, so that their colleagues may examine the evidence underlying particular assertions.