Network theory applied to finding terrorists
Patrick Radden Keefe story in The New York Times.
The Notre Dame physicist Albert-Laszlo Barabasi studied one obvious network -- the Internet -- and found that any two unrelated Web pages are separated by only 19 links. After Sept. 11, Valdis Krebs, a Cleveland consultant who produces social network "maps" for corporate and nonprofit clients, decided to map the hijackers. He started with two of the plotters, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, and, using press accounts, produced a chart of the interconnections — shared addresses, telephone numbers, even frequent-flier numbers — within the group. All of the 19 hijackers were tied to one another by just a few links, and a disproportionate number of links converged on the leader, Mohamed Atta.
Submitted by amyloo on Sun, 03/12/2006 - 00:00.
