ABSTRACT
When my private intelligence practice began, we found that for search terms (people, rms, topics) with many references, it is possible to engage in endless collection and review of links, with the hope that the next
click will bring you to the holy grail of the search. After a point, it’s like the slots player at the airport in Las Vegas: How often will you win, and how many more times must you drop in a coin and wish? The house has the game stacked against you, and more play simply means more loss. Therefore, it is important to establish at the beginning how much searching, review, and capture of results is enough for a given purpose, or at what point the prospect of winning any more diminishes to near zero. When important decisions are to be made based on results, it becomes all the more important that the completeness of the search is sufcient that no major reference is overlooked; the search engines and sites most likely to be productive have all been queried; and the additional leads found in initial search results have been incorporated into follow-up searches. For fairness in using cyber vetting, a similar process must be applied for all candidates (or all candidates in certain categories, such as those seeking high-level clearances), so that there will be no discrimination in who is searched or the reach of the search. Since most of the references will be positive or neutral, the goal of the search is not to nd what is derogatory (since that may not exist), but rather to meet the requirements set for a “full search.” The full search is to be dened by policy, which should dene the scope of the search as its most important attribute.
