Comment Re:Gee it's almost impressive..... (Score 2, Interesting) 187
but as TFA points out, the people they're looking for often do things that should get them caught, like using the same address and phone number when buying the plane tickets in the case of the 9/11 hijackers. The basic idea is to find a better way to process the data they already have, and to give people the ability to process data that will help them, even when they don't necessarily have access to it (ie the use of data classified at a level higher than the searcher has access to).
The problem generally hasn't been (so far anyway) that the data wasn't there, it was just that no one had the time or ability to process the information in a useful manner to make these connections. Supposedly this tool does a much better job of it than previous tools, but even if it does, we probably won't hear much more about it either way.