Network World — My grandmother, who was from the county of Lancashire in England, had many aphorisms that she delivered in "Black Country" dialect, and one came to mind as I thought about the focus of this column: "Tha' canna see wood f'ot trees nor th'owd lad for sore eyes."

Allow me to translate: You can't see the forest for the trees (the big picture because you're focusing on the details) or the devil (the "old lad", that is, the big problem) for sore eyes (even though you looked hard). In other words, too much detail and not enough strategy and you won't get anywhere.

What brought this to mind was reading about the "Nationwide Suspicious Activities Reporting (SAR) Initiative", otherwise called the "National Strategy for Information Sharing (Strategy)" (yes, they apparently thought that including the word "Strategy" a second time in parentheses was important) which is acronymized as "NSIS".

The "Nationwide SAR Initiative (NSI)" (because we don't have nearly enough acronym variations yet) is to establish a "unified process for reporting, tracking, and accessing of Suspicious Activities Reports (SARs)" by the "Information Sharing Environment"  or "ISE", a clearinghouse for SARs for intelligence, law enforcement, defense, homeland security and foreign affairs.

So, what actually are SARs? It turns out these are defined as "Official documentation of observed behavior reasonably indicative of pre-operational planning related to terrorism or other criminal activity."

While the original SARs were for the reporting of "suspicious" financial transactions, the current SARs XML-based reporting schema includes a couple hundred categories and sub-categories and applies to things such as aircraft, vehicles, places and people, and involves contributions from law enforcement in 22 cities.

Last year Eliot Spitzer, the now ex-New York governor and former New York attorney general, resigned because his method of paying for call girls involved a wire transfer of $10,000 -- twice the value that triggers a SAR -- to QAT Consulting, a front for the Emperors Club VIP prostitution ring.

Somehow this got referred to the Public Integrity section of the Bush Administration's Justice Department and Spitzer wound up getting investigated for contravening the Mann Act, which is taking women over state lines for immoral purposes. Exactly who was gunning for Spitzer or why has never been revealed but it's obvious he annoyed someone.

And therein lies the danger of the whole concept of Suspicious Activities Reporting: What was originally a scheme for detecting major money laundering or terrorist financing got extended and broadened to allow the New York governor to be chased out of office. I, for one, know that because of this I'll be able to sleep better.

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