Several search companies are offering technology to help government agencies organise their records. It could stop anti-terrorist information from falling through the cracks.
Some US government officials engaged in the so-called war on terror would like to see privacy laws relaxed so they can get better access to e-mail and other sensitive material exchanged over the Internet.
Other bureaucrats would be happy just to have a better filing system.
Tracking down terrorists, after all, does not necessarily require intercepting top-secret conversations. Sometimes it is a more mundane task of making sure one government agency can share its records with another.
Speculation has been rife, for instance, that September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta might not have been allowed back into the United States last year if officials at the Department of Immigration had known about an outstanding warrant for his arrest resulting from a Florida traffic violation.