On U.S. Homeland Security and Database Technology

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, “homeland security” has become the centerpiece of U.S. domestic and foreign policies. The number of terrorists is a tiny fraction of all the people who live in or enter the U.S. However, given the enormous consequences of a repeat of the September 11 attacks, all non-terrorists have been subjected to security measures. The cost of all the security measures includes not only the cost of human resources, deployment of defensive weaponry and technology purchases, but also the time that all people waste. One of the ways to reduce costs is to make terrorist-related intelligence more precise and accurate, so that efforts to track, arrest and deter terrorists, their supporters and movements of funds and weapons can be more precisely directed. One of the ways to make such intelligence more precise is the use of data gathered and stored in databases, and database and related technologies to query, search and mine the databases. This paper first reviews the difficulties in tracking terrorist suspects and their activities. It then examines how databases, and database and related technologies, can be used and made more effective in aiding the war against terror.