Shorter FBI: “Predicting terrorist attacks before they happen is easy, all you have to do is let us track millions of people for no reason. Honest!”:

In theory, predictive analysis involves mapping a known pattern of terrorist behavior — for instance, the sequence and timing of such mundane activities as bank transactions and travel purchases — against a massive collection of such records like the NSAC databases. If an individual’s actions match the pattern, they can be considered a suspect, even if they have no known ties to any suspected terrorists or known terrorist groups.

Such a method would help identify “sleeper cells,” the FBI claims in its request — secret groups of terrorists living innocuously within the United States, waiting for a signal from a terrorist group leader to assemble and strike.

This reminds me of that old bank rule that had transactions over a certain amount reported to the feds, ostensibly to go after the drug trade. Different excuse, same outcome: privacy goes bye-bye thanks to wild goose chases.

Besides, who says that if there are “sleeper cells” they wouldn’t deliberately change their routines? If they’ve gone this long without being detected, I’d think they’d plan for something like this. More than likely, in a half-assed attempt at rectifying that oversight the feds would start profiling — “Person X & Person Y both did blahblahblah, but Person Y donated to some mosque, GET HIM!!”.

But to date the approach has not proven workable. So far, terrorism researchers “cannot readily distinguish the absolute scale of normal behaviors” for terrorists or ordinary Americans, conceded a 2006 document from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and obtained by National Journal magazine. In other words, no one can figure out how terrorists act differently from normal Americans.

“We had no idea how on God’s earth you would characterize and capture normal behavior,” a former researcher for the ill-fated Total Information Awareness (TIA) program told the magazine last October. (emphasis mine)

Ok, if this program is too much even for someone associated with TIA…

Props.