To fight terrorism, the Information Awareness Office (IAO)
of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is planning
to develop a system that uses a super database of recorded online transactions
and analytical programming that will identify what is referred to as the
information signature of a terrorist or terrorist activity before harm can
be done. The information signature is really a pattern of electronic data
gathered from public and private sources that matches or approximates previously
identified patterns. After a terrorist act has occurred, law enforcement
agencies are often able to identify who is responsible for the attack by
tracing transactional records and following what investigators call a "paper
trail". Law enforcement agencies hope to establish a database of paper
trails to understand how terrorists prepare for an attack so that they can
prevent future attacks.
