You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Home Front: WoT
State Dept. Mending Ways After Xmas Day Incident
2010-01-13
Philip J. Crowley, assistant secretary of state for public affairs, acknowledged last week at a news conference that State Department officials made two key errors in the initial reporting about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

They misspelled his name -- "a one-letter difference," an intelligence official said -- in filing their first report Nov. 20, the day after Umau Mutallab, a Nigerian banker, described his concerns about his son.

And they didn't officially look for Abdulmutallab in a department database of U.S. visa-holders. Abdulmutallab, Abdulmutalab, there's no real difference between these spellings, except to a computer
Posted by:Anguper Hupomosing9418

#13  ION NEWSMAX > [DHS Report]AL QAEDA LINKED TO ROGUE AVIATION NETWORK. Mystery Twin-Turboprops = Shuttles, Executive Jets, + retired Boeing 727's flying trans-Atlantic drug routes between HUGO'S COLUMBIA + UNSTABLE WEST AFRICAN COUNTRIES + SAHEL.

* SAME [last week]> THE JIHADIST DECADE COMETH.

** TOPIX > FREEREPUBLIC = REPORT: AL QAEDA PLANNING NEW ATTACK AGZ THE UNITED STATES.
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2010-01-13 21:58  

#12  When you're dealing with non-English names and variants, it'd seem useful to use something a little larger than the name as a tag-- name+parents' names + home town--and allow for fuzzier matches in the database.
Posted by: James   2010-01-13 21:08  

#11  There are only 1/2 a million records in the no-fly db you can cache that in ram.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles   2010-01-13 20:49  

#10  I see you are familiar with the basic protocol.

Indeed. One might even venture to say that I'm familiar with a bit more than the basics.
Posted by: lotp   2010-01-13 20:28  

#9  if only for the sake of the security of our nation, i would volunteer to frisk that particular Abdul.
Posted by: abu do you love   2010-01-13 17:49  

#8  
I did a search on Abdul and came up with this:



I think she needs to be frisked ....
Posted by: gorb   2010-01-13 16:57  

#7  SE tool in layman's terms, yes. Layman being myself of course. A bit more advanced than Bing. I see you are familiar with the basic protocol. Gorb's comment sums it up nicely. I'm always a bit wary of those who immeditely blame a computer or system for a shortcoming.
Posted by: Besoeker   2010-01-13 16:41  

#6  It's not the search engine but the indexing strategy, for the most part, that determines time/effectiveness for partially specified searches.
Posted by: lotp   2010-01-13 16:33  

#5  Quite correct Steve, if one is using commercial search engines.
Posted by: Besoeker   2010-01-13 16:20  

#4  Dear Besoeker, please get a strong drink, it will take a while ...

-- search engine
Posted by: Steve White   2010-01-13 16:08  

#3  Dear search engine, please search any combination, sequence or spelling of the following names beginning with the letters A-B-D-U-L.....
Posted by: Besoeker   2010-01-13 15:44  

#2  I wonder if they should use Google(tm)?
Posted by: Tarzan Ominemble7842   2010-01-13 13:27  

#1  Bull$hi+.
Posted by: gorb   2010-01-13 13:13  

00:00