GAO Studies U.S. Government Data Mining

securitas writes "Total Information Awareness is alive and thriving. eWEEK's Caron Carlson reports on a new General Accounting Office study that says TIA-style data mining programs are rampant in federal agencies with 199 projects at 52 of 128 agencies. The Defense Intelligence Agency/DoD is the single largest user of these data mining projects (eg. Verity K2 Enterprise). The story was first reported by Reuters' Andy Sullivan (ZDNet UK mirror) and the NYT's Robert Pear, who wrote that at least 122 projects used personally identifying information like names, e-mail addresses, Social Security and driver's license numbers. The 'actual numbers are likely to be much higher' because the report excludes classified projects. Wired News' Kim Zetter writes that, in addition to government databases, federal agencies mine private databases of credit rating agencies, bank account numbers, student loan applications, etc. This week the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) released a report with privacy guidelines for data mining technology (PDF) development and use. Guidelines include data anonymization, government data access authorization and audit trails. Cynthia (Cindy) Webb's 'Total Information Dilemma' at the Washington Post is an excellent survey of media coverage of TIA, MATRIX and the GAO report 'Data Mining: Federal Efforts Cover a Wide Range of Uses' (mirror, both in PDF format). More at GCN, GovExec and the Guardian/AP."

Comments

Re:To give the tin foil hat view of the whole thin

[Bob Bitchen]

And the saddest thing of course is that most people are outraged by the price of gasoline. We are indeed in sad shape. Bush should be impeached for lying about the Iraq "war". We really need to send Bush and his cast of kooks, Colin Powell, his son FCC chairman Powell, Condoleeza Rice, "Big" Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, et. al. into early retirement. Their view of the way the world should be is too sick and twisted.

Re:Here's the difference...

[JonnyCalcutta]

There is no true freedom in the United States either. Why should a private person be prohibited from killing another, or performing sexual acts on whoever they want, or driving at whatever speed they want, or crossing the road wherever and whenever they want, or taking whatever they want?

I don't think you even know what freedom means, but then you are just a troll so why am I even bothering to reply. Goddammit!

Data mining is good..

[rofthorax]

Data mining influences design choices for commercial entrprises, but its good to have data mining for the government, even of theory own institutions, it helps keep everyone accountable for what they do, which reduces crime. It can be abused though, say the one managing the database intentionally leaves information out of the database to let certain kinds of crime go undetected. But the idea behind data mining is to detect problems before they can fester.

However I was involved in a project to standardize the processes of data collection and use for healthcare, with the end result an interface standard for connecting healthcare institutiones, the technology was contested by Microsoft's vendors because it was claimed to be competitive with packages such as outlook, access and excel. So LANL pulled the plug on the research. The result of the research can be found at www.openemed.org . The applications of this technology are tremendous, but I've been able to tens of useful purposes for the technology, like a paperless womb-to-tomb healthcare record useable for determining healthcare trends and epidemics. Its either this or adopt HL7 which is big, bulky, and inconsistent from year to year.