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Congress Addresses
Data Mining Program
Senator Patrick Leahy, R-Vt., Judiciary Committee Chairman, wrote a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft inquiring about the “data mining” operations, practices and policies at the Department of Justice. Leahy questioned the extent to which the Department of Justice is relying on data mining to deal with terrorism or other criminal activity and how the technology is being used. Leahy wanted congressional oversight and standards implemented in programs like the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program being developed within the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). TIA, a controversial data-mining project headed by Retired Admiral John Poindexter, seeks to develop tools for sorting through large amounts of personal information, including financial, medical, communications and travel records. TIA is intended to generate tools for monitoring the daily personal transactions by Americans and others, including tracking the use of passports, driver’s licenses, credit cards, airline tickets and rental cars.
Leahy acknowledged that, while technological advances in the capability to track commercial and government databases and consumer transactions have changed the way companies market their products and services, these advances have raised new issues and concerns. One is the possibility of excessive government surveillance that could interfere with individual privacy interests and rights. The amount of information available may soon make updating the data as well as gauging the reliability and accuracy of the data difficult or impossible.
Other questions involve the number and purpose of data mining or pattern-recognition operations currently being used by the Department of Justice, the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force and TIA. Another concern is whether these practices comply with the Privacy Act and the amount of coordination with the Department of Homeland Security.
On Jan. 23, 2003, the Senate unanimously passed a measure limiting the development and deployment of the TIA program. The amendment to an omnibus appropriations bill will end funding for the TIA program 60 days after the bill’s passage unless the government produces a detailed report on TIA, its goals and its impact on privacy. The amendment, sponsored by Sen. Wyden, D-Ore., was cosponsored by Leahy and Diane Feinstein, D-Cal., and also requires specific Congressional authorization before TIA is deployed by any agency. The bill does except some military activities conducted overseas. The bill now goes to conference along with the counterpart House-passed bill, which does not contain a similar TIA amendment. |
