INFORMATION INTEGRATION/DATA/DATA MINING

"Use of Data Collection Systems Is Up Sharply FoUowing 9/11"

By Ann Davis
The Wall Street Journal
May 22, 2003

In the 20 months since Sept. 11, 2001, little-known

government and commercial databases that track the
movements and backgrounds of everyday Americans have
steadily ballooned. Developed as counterterrorism tools,
the systems are aimed at bridging gaps in information that
let the 9/11 hijackers slip past law enforcement. But they
also make it easier for the government to gather
information about American citizens who arent suspected of
anything criminal. Public attention has focused almost
entirely on two "data-mining" projects that have drawn
objections from privacy advocates: a new airline-passenger
profiling system known as Capps, intended to block
suspected terrorists from flying, and the Pentagon's Total
Information Awareness program, aimed at detecting patterns
of terrorist activity. Concerns about Total Information
Awareness flared again this week, when the Pentagon said it
had renamed the initiative Terrorist Information Awareness
but still outlined plans to use vast amounts of government
and commercial data on U.S. citizens to sniff out
suspicious activity.

While debates rage about these two programs, though, myriad

other government agencies and private companies are
building similar kinds of massive, easily searched
databases on a broad range of people, all in the name of
the war on terror. The emerging systems link databases that
didnt communicate previously, mixing public records, such
as indictments and prosecutions, with intelligence based
largely on investigators' hunches.

The idea is to use sophisticated software to "see things

that a human being can't possibly see," says Steve McCraw,
the Federal Bureau of Investigation's assistant director in
the agency's office of intelligence. "We collect such
voluminous amounts of data that we need to be able to find
previously unknown links, relationships and associations
hidden within our own data."

But critics say the more information of varying credibility

is amassed in one place, the greater the risk of
overloading investigators with irrelevant leads that cast
needless suspicion on innocent people. "What we're talking
about here is unverified information and not necessarily
very accurate information," says James Dempsey, executive
director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an
online policy group in Washington.

Some examples of what's in the works: