Marketing: It appears that MATRIX (the Multistate Anti-TeRrorism Information EXchange) at one stage did — and may still — include a ‘terrorism quotient’ field, representing ‘a statistical likelihood of (people) being terrorists’.
Seisint, the company providing the system, is a Boca Raton, FL company founded by Hank Asher, previously of Database Technologies, the company that ‘stripped thousands of African Americans from the Florida voter rolls before the 2000 election, erroneously contending that they were felons’. Lovely.
Boca Raton, eh? Yep, there’s a spam connection — Hank Asher also, apparently, bought eDirect.com from noted Boca-based spammer Steve Hardigree (ROKSO record).
The email in the linked article goes on to note that Asher and Hardigree had ‘disagreements’ regarding ‘how eDirect should position itself in the Direct Marketing Community’, so I doubt Asher might have necessarily approved of spamming — but it does appear he had interests in Direct Marketing.
Given that, I suggest a new spin-off strategy for Seisint’s ‘terrorism quotient’ field, courtesy of my mate Luke: terrorist-targeted direct marketing!
Those turrists are in the market for lots of high-profit-margin goods:
- AK-47s (OK, not a very big margin there)
- chemical weapons instructions (just download from the internet! but don’t tell them that)
- weapons-of-mass-destruction-related-program-like-activities
All Seisint have to do is SELECT Name,EmailAddress FROM MATRIX WHERE TQ
> 120, do a mail run, then watch those non-consecutively-numbered
US dollars roll in. Easy!