All of which is, as far as it goes, logical. But take it a little further and the inherent futility of the route becomes apparent – ultimately, probably quite soon, the volume of data overwhelms the investigators and infinite time is needed to analyse all of it. And the less developed the plot is at the time the suspects are pulled in, the greater the number of possible outcomes (things they ‘might’ be planning) that will need to be chased-up. Short of the tech industry making the breakthrough into machine intelligence that will effectively do the analysis for them (which is a breakthrough the snake-oil salesmen suggest, and dopes in Government believe, has been achieved already), the approach itself is doomed. Essentially, as far as data is concerned police try to ‘collar the lot’ and then through analysis, attempt to build the most complete picture of a case that is possible. Use of initiative, experience and acting on probabilities will tend to be pressured out of such systems, and as the data volumes grow the result will tend to be teams of disempowered machine minders chained to a system that has ground to a halt. This effect is manifesting itself visibly across UK Government systems in general, we humbly submit. But how long will it take them to figure this out? “

Some degree of probability analysis might be a start. Speaking of which…..

“Robust Decision Methodology for Reasoning Under Deep Uncertainty“

Despite the sexy title this not a ponderous tome but a sparkly powerpoint presentation. Worth looking at because time, politics, stress and human frailty causes us all to take cognitive short-cuts from time to time ( or in some cases, all the time). Echoes things I have read in Studies in Intelligence. Perhaps Art can be enticed to comment ?

UPDATE:

Curtis recommends the following article on Brain-nanotech interface and I agree.

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