The headlines are always the same. They read like a script written by a bureaucrat trying to justify a budget hike. "Suspect was on the radar." "Attacker previously flagged by federal agents." We see it again with the tragic violence in San Diego. The implication is clear: the system worked, but it just didn't work enough.
That is a lie.
The "flagging" system didn't fail. It functioned exactly as a bloated, data-saturated bureaucracy should. It collected a grain of sand and added it to a desert of noise. If you think the solution to preventing the next tragedy is "better flagging" or "closing the gap" in federal databases, you aren't just wrong. You are part of the problem. You are asking for a bigger haystack while the needle is already pricking your thumb.
The Surveillance Theater of the Flagged Suspect
Every time a shooter is revealed to have been "on the radar," the public reacts with a mix of shock and indignation. How could they let him slip through?
I’ve spent years watching how intelligence data actually moves—or doesn't move—through federal pipelines. Here is the reality: the FBI’s "radar" isn't a high-tech tracking system. It’s a junk drawer. Being "flagged" can mean anything from an anonymous tip that went nowhere to a formal investigation that was closed for lack of evidence.
The media treats a "flag" like a glowing red beacon over a suspect’s head. In reality, it’s a Post-it note buried under ten million other Post-it notes. When we demand that the government "do something" about everyone they flag, we are demanding the end of due process in favor of a Pre-Crime division that doesn't actually have the bandwidth to watch the people it already knows about.
Data Gluttony is Not Intelligence
The intelligence community has a gluttony problem. They collect everything because they are terrified of being blamed for missing anything. This is the "Collect it All" doctrine championed by figures like Keith Alexander during his tenure at the NSA.
The logic is simple: if we have all the data, we can prevent all the crime.
But data is not intelligence. Intelligence is the analysis of data. When you increase the volume of data by 1,000% but only increase your analytical capacity by 5%, you haven't made the country safer. You’ve made the analysts blind.
The San Diego shooter being "previously flagged" isn't a sign of a loophole. It’s a sign of saturation. The FBI receives thousands of tips every single day. Many of them are malicious, most of them are junk, and a tiny fraction are actionable. By the time an agent clears the garbage off their desk, the "flagged" individual has already moved from ideation to action.
The Civil Liberties Trade-off is a Bad Deal
We are told that we must sacrifice privacy for security. That’s the standard bargain. But look at the San Diego case and dozens like it. We gave up the privacy. We allowed the domestic surveillance. We let the databases grow.
And the security never arrived.
We are currently living in the worst of both worlds. We have a surveillance state that is intrusive enough to chill free speech and monitor law-abiding citizens, yet it is too clumsy and overwhelmed to actually stop a motivated attacker.
If the FBI has "flagged" someone and that person still carries out a massacre, the answer isn't to give the FBI more power. The answer is to admit that the "flagging" system is a psychological security blanket for the public, not a tactical tool for prevention.
The Pre-Crime Paradox
Imagine a scenario where the FBI acts on every "flag."
A teenager posts a dark meme. A neighbor reports a "suspicious" conversation. A traveler visits the wrong website. Under the "No More Slips" policy the public seems to want, all these people would be detained, stripped of their rights, or placed under 24/7 physical surveillance.
The cost of such a system isn't just measured in dollars; it’s measured in the total erosion of a free society. More importantly, it still wouldn't work. Humans are notoriously bad at predicting behavior. We can identify a "risk profile," but we cannot identify a "will."
The San Diego attacker, like many before him, likely didn't fit a clean, predictable mold until the moment he pulled the trigger. Attempting to "fix" this by tightening the surveillance net only catches more dolphins while the sharks swim through the mesh.
The Local Intelligence Deficit
While federal agencies are busy building massive, centralized databases that fail to stop local attacks, the real front line is being starved.
Intelligence isn't found in a server farm in Utah. It’s found on the street. It’s found in the community members who see the change in a neighbor’s behavior. But because we’ve been conditioned to "report it to the FBI," local law enforcement and community intervention programs are often bypassed or underfunded.
The "flag" at the federal level is a static data point. A conversation at the local level is a dynamic intervention. We have traded human intuition for algorithmic monitoring, and the results are written in blood.
Stop Asking for More Surveillance
Every time we scream "Why wasn't he stopped?" after a tragedy where the suspect was "known," we are giving the government a mandate to expand.
- "We need more AI to scan social media."
- "We need better cross-agency data sharing."
- "We need lower thresholds for warrants."
These are the wrong answers to a flawed question. The question isn't "How do we catch them all?" The question is "Why do we think a federal agency can be an omnipresent shield?"
The hard truth—the one that no politician will tell you—is that in a free society, you cannot stop every lone actor. You cannot monitor every "flagged" individual without becoming a police state. And even then, the police state usually fails because it becomes its own biggest obstacle.
The Myth of the "Missed Signal"
Critics love to talk about "connecting the dots." It’s a favorite phrase of the 9/11 Commission and every oversight committee since.
Connecting the dots is easy when you’re looking at a completed picture. It’s impossible when the dots are moving, changing color, and hidden among billions of other dots. The San Diego mosque attack wasn't a failure of "connection." It was a reality of human unpredictability.
The attacker might have been "flagged" for a comment made years prior. Does that justify a lifetime of surveillance? If the answer is yes, then millions of Americans need to be under constant watch today. If the answer is no, then stop acting surprised when someone who was once "flagged" does something terrible.
The Accountability Dodge
The "previously flagged" narrative serves another purpose: it lets the agency off the hook while simultaneously asking for more money.
If the FBI says, "We knew about him," they aren't admitting guilt. They are signaling that they were "on it" but lacked the resources to finish the job. It is the ultimate bureaucratic shield. It turns a failure into a sales pitch.
We need to stop buying the pitch.
We need to demand a leaner, more focused intelligence apparatus that ignores the noise and focuses on credible, immediate threats rather than the "maybe-one-day" flagging of half the population. We need to stop pretending that a entry in a database is the same thing as a prevention strategy.
Stop Looking to the Feds for Salvation
The San Diego mosque attack is a tragedy that will be used to justify the next generation of invasive tech. They will tell you that if they just had a bit more access, a bit more "synergy" between departments, they could have stopped it.
They are lying to you.
The "flag" is a ghost. It is a digital footprint that gives the illusion of control in a world that is inherently uncontrollable. If you want to prevent the next attack, look to your community, look to mental health, and look to the breakdown of social cohesion.
But for heaven's sake, stop looking at the FBI’s "radar." It’s broken, and more data won't fix it.
The more we "flag," the less we see.
