Intelligence analysis software being developed in the US could be used to predict future terrorist attacks, claims Applied Systems Intelligence in Roswell, Georgia.Knowledge Aided Retrieval in Activity Context (KARNAC) uses “profiles” of different categories of terrorist attacks to seek out key components of possible events from existing databases of information, both public and private, and spotting suspicious patterns of activity.

The information for KARNAC would come from both structured and unstructured databases. The former includes gun registrations, driver’s licences and criminal records, while the latter would include the Internet and newspapers, journals and county records.

KARNAC will raise concerns about privacy of information, but the company counters that the prospect of terrorist attacks on the scale of the World Trade Center disaster is more terrifying than losing one’s privacy.