A proposal for a volunteer SETI-type approach to combat terrorism

Excellent idea: here's a first finding from an helping hand. This place is full of outraged, immoral, hateful, terrorists that recently killed above 100,000 peaceful civilians in a universaly condemned terrorist attack:

http://local.google.com/?ll=38.897513,-77.036508&spn=0.002092,0.003616&t=k

I agree with the noble intent of your idea, but here's a fundamental question: how *old* are these satellite images? If the images are not timely in nature, we would be wasting our time poring over them. Many of these satellite images could even be highly classified.

The first post on this article is exactly why this will not work. The left thinks that anybody who does not believe exactly as they do are evil or terrorists or whatever. The problem is that with the left for the most part all reasonable thought has been displaced by dogma.

Just as Seti doesn't find any extraterrestrial intelligent signals, Sitt (search for intraterrestrial terrorists) wouldn't find anything because it isn't there. The word "terrorist" is a popular word used to get unlimited funding for governments. Before them it was "communists", and before that "indians". War has always been VERY profitable, much more so than ordinary commerce, that's why humans do it. Recent estimates say the war on Iraq has cost over 2 000 000 million dollars. That's a figure impossible to even visualize. And what did it really get us? Just a bunch of young dead soldiers who died in vain. Could a dedicated computer network have prevented 9/11? Very probably, but that would have been a one time opportunity only. Those few fanatic terrorists that do exist are not that dumb to expose themselves anymore. (I'm not counting Iraqi people who defend their country against an invader, any country would defend themself against someone who invaded them on the lies like "We know they have WMD"). I do not sympathise with real terrorists, I just say they are the modern "boogeyman", much talked about but seldom seen, if ever.
So my answer is no, don't set up a network of computers to do useless work, set up one to do better things like finding a cure for cancer, birdflu or diabetes. Less people die from actual terrorist action than any other known cause of death.

Networking: Fingerprints of terrorists
CHICAGO, Feb. 27 (UPI) -- A Muslim terrorist places a bomb inside a mosque in Iraq. The bomb detonates, obliterating most of the building. But American military personnel, sifting through the debris, just moments later, find a doorknob with the scoundrel's fingerprints on it, from a door he opened to enter the facility. The prints are collected with digital technology, and sent via a wireless network, locally, in Iraq, and then across the globe via satellite to the Army's Biometric Fusion Center in Clarksburg, W. Va., near Washington, D.C.

There, Army agents, working with FBI counterparts, scan the prints, and compare them with a database of known terrorists, looking to determine if the killer was behind other bombings in Iraq, Afghanistan, or elsewhere in the world, experts tell United Press International's Networking. By Gene Koprowski

Why not use a volunteer network of computer users to examine millions of satellite images of the areas where Osama Bin Laden and others accused of terrorist acts are believed to be hiding?

Because unless you are familiar with the landscape of Paktia and North Waziristan, the images would be meaningless. And it is simply laughable that you could train volunteers to recognize anything that would be useful. There is a reason we spend millions of dollars on intelligence gathering. It is expensive work.

What we need to do is listen to those who are knowledgeable and objective observers-

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2006/02/the_next_attack.html

I really wish that this was possible, or even in other ways to help. I am disable and wish everyday that i could help or be useful in the fight againest terrorists. this isnt going to stop today or tomarrow, it here to stay and we have to get invovled in helping our country in the fight againest these devils.i believe that we are going to see something much worse then sept 11 and we all need to help in this fight, But the problem is that there is no place or group in the goverment or privite that i can find that is looking for any kind of help.i know i would do what ever i could to help in this problem if someone would just show me where to sign up. These people want to destroy us and or way of living and we are just not waking up to this problem and wont until we get hit again, its so sad to see post like the first one, it just shows that so many our concerned on right or left and not about doing the right thing.

To hell with the naysayers who posted here, and those who have no sense of moral equivalence , thinking that the USA and Western culture is just as bad as culture that murders and oppresses it's OWN people.

The best thing you can do is work and create wealth. Work extra hours. Your tax money helps in the fight. While you might not agree with how the fight is conducted, nothing else you do has as much impact.

The other thing to do is correct the nihilists who say that "we" are the terrorists.

It is inevitable at this point that terrorists will win until the West obliterates the culture of defeat, pessimism and nihilism that half our population holds. Self loathing will lead to obidience to allah, taliban style.