<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Anyone who thinks someone can write a computer program that will PREVENT future terrorist attacks is nuts. Prevention only works when you have a thorough understanding about how and why things fail. Since terrorists tend to use new and unforeseen methods of attack, you can't depend solely on a system that tries to anticipate the attack.

If you are going to collect lots of personal information, it has to be for a very good reason. There must be a high degree of certainty terrorist attacks would be completely eliminated as a result. Since this is an impossibly ridiculous expectation -- collecting the data won't help. So don't do it.

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The problem with 9/11 wasn't that terrorists got weapons past security. The problem was they were able to get control of an airplane. The most positive reaction to 9/11 was reinforcing cockpit doors. That single change has made it easily 100 times harder to use airplanes to destroy buildings. No amount of computer technology could do that.</font>