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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Did Able Danger spot Mohammed Atta using face recognition software?
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2005 16:20:20 -0400
From: Richard M. Smith <rms@computerbytesman.com>
To: 'Declan McCullagh' <declan@well.com>

Disabling Able Danger
http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2005/09/disabling_able_.html

According to military sources familiar with the Able Danger legal side, the
effort stepped over the line when LIWA contractors purchased photographic
collections of people entering and exiting mosques in the United States and
overseas. One source says that LIWA contractors dealt with a questionable
source of photographs in California, either a white supremacy group or some
other anti-Islamic organization.

"There are records of who goes where regarding visits to mosques," Shaffer
told Government Security News. "That was the data that LIWA was buying off
the Internet from information brokers." It was stuff no one else bothered to
look at, says Shaffer.

LIWA purchased an open-source, six-month data run, Shaffer says, and
analysts developed a set of eight data points common to 1993 World Trade
Center bombers and associates. With advanced software, including facial
recognition software able to track individuals from the collected
photographs, Shaffer says contractors "made the link between [Mohammed] Atta
and [Sheik Omar Abdel] Rahman, the first World Trade Center bomber."

Posted by Declan McCullagh on Sep 28, 2005

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