ABSTRACT
In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in Washington and New York (and subsequent attacks in London, Madrid and Mumbai), states have faced pressing questions about whether these attacks could have been prevented. The US 9/11 Commission, for example, accused security authorities of a ‘failure of the imagination’ and a failure to ‘identify telltale indicators connected to the most dangerous possibilities’ (Kean and Hamilton 2004: 346). A prominent theme of the war on terror ever since has been to ‘connect the dots’ of available information to avert security threats before they occur. Data and data analytics have become vital tools in international security efforts (Amoore and de Goede 2005; 2008).
