After the September 11 attacks , Ingram and Finch began working to create an artificially intelligent machine that could predict terrorist attacks through processing government feeds from emails , phone calls , and surveillance cameras . The machine also generated a list of predicted murders and violent crimes " non-relevant to national security " . It was determined that this non-relevant list should have to be ignored , since passing the information to law enforcement agencies could reveal the existence and extent of constitutionally proscribed government surveillance . For this reason , and rationalizing it as done for the greater good , Finch programmed the machine to delete the non-relevant list every day at midnight . Ingram and Finch clashed when Finch discovered that Ingram had created a backdoor into the machine before handing it over and was trying to warn and even save people on the " irrelevant list " . Finch shut down the backdoor
September 11 attacks
September 11 attacks
Harold Finch (Person of Interest)