

UCLA Researchers Predicted Bin Laden's Hideout Location to Within 130 miles - dr_
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/05/04/ucla-researchers-predicted-bin-ladens-city-hideout-200-miles/?test=latestnews

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shantanubala
They were within 130 miles, which is fairly narrow if you consider all of
Pakistan. But how much of that was actually due to the validity of their
research methods and how much of that was simply right-place right-time? How
much of this article was politicized? All we know is that they used some
analysis of some publicly available data and were within 130 miles. I'd like a
little more detail before I actually make any judgments.

Just because the general public thinks Osama Bin Laden lived in a cave doesn't
mean the CIA was thinking the same thing. The article has some slant to make
it seem as though our government was ineffective and slow at capturing Bin
Laden and predicting where he would be, but let's ask a few more questions: if
we sent troops to search every building in a 130-mile radius, Bin Laden would
escape easily, wouldn't he? Even if we know within 5 square miles, he could
escape. We need to know the exact building, otherwise it would be worthless.
We sent a team of Navy Seals with helicopters. We invaded a sovereign country
without a declaration of war. We violated international law. If we do that, we
better be damn sure beyond just a 130-mile radius.

EDIT: They predicted with an "88.9% probability" that he would be within 130
miles of where he was found. That in an of itself is absolutely useless.

Here's what our government actually did: they found the pseudonym of a guy who
worked as a courier who had ties to Al Quada, found his real name, found out
where he was going, found ties to Bin Laden, and found an exact address. Over
years. We can't ask the Pakistani government for help, because Bin Laden will
escape again. We can't search based on a 88.9% chance within a 130-mile
radius.

This wasn't a very good article, but I definitely would like to learn more
about the actual research.

~~~
kwis
Here's the complete paper:

<http://web.mit.edu/mitir/2009/online/finding-bin-laden.pdf>

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DavidSJ
They didn't predict that he would be in a 130 mile radius which included the
place he actually was. They predicted that he would be somewhere else, which
happened to be 130 miles away.

So they were wrong.

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d0ne
Their approach and results are equally interesting.

Too bad their is a lot more to 'actionable intelligence' than actual
intelligence. I'm fairly certain there were rooms full of people at the CIA,
NSA and JOC screaming "he's chilling in Pakistan with AC and and a chef!" for
years now. Problem being, there was one room at the White House where a much
smaller group of people were discussing the diplomatic ramifications of the
levels of 'actionable' substances to each bloodcurdling scream...

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DavidSJ
In other news, someone predicted correctly yesterday which stocks you should
have bought today.

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lotusleaf1987
I submitted this yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2511034>

Glad to see it's getting attention though, regardless.

To me the interesting thing was that they did this _two years ago..._

