The US Department of Homeland Security kickstarted the current terror alert when it raised its threat warning to orange, in response to an 'unprecedented increase in "chatter"' - the term used by intelligence officials to describe communication levels between suspected terror groups and individuals (4). But how reliable is 'chatter', as an indicator of terrorists' intentions or imminent action? Unlike human intelligence -which collects information through human contact with a terror group or enemy state, usually through infiltration - 'chatter', or signal intelligence, is collected by technical means, by using satellites to eavesdrop on phone conversations and email correspondence between suspected terrorists. Not surprisingly, such chatter often proves inadequate for those involved in counter-terrorism.
'Chatter is a descriptive term', says John Hamre, President of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. 'Much like when you walk into a room and there are many conversations underway, you can not clearly hear any complete conversation, only random pieces.' Hamre, who served as deputy secretary of defence under President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s, tells me that 'chatter also refers to background noise'. 'So as it relates to intelligence, chatter reflects a larger, though not necessarily a large, number of messages that have suspicious references, which appear related but with inadequate specific details
. Often the capacity to analyse these references is quite limited, so they are aggregated into general categories.'
