Friday, May 28, 2004

Survey Finds U.S. Agencies Engaged in 'Data Mining':
"A survey of federal agencies has found more than 120 programs that collect and analyze large amounts of personal data on individuals to predict their behavior.

The survey, to be issued Thursday by the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, found that the practice, known as data mining, was ubiquitous."

In canvassing federal agencies, the accounting office found that 52 were systematically sifting through computer databases. These agencies reported 199 data mining projects, of which 68 were planned and 131 were in operation. At least 122 of the 199 projects used identifying information like names, e-mail addresses, Social Security numbers and driver's license numbers.

The survey provides the first authoritative estimate of the extent of data mining by the government. It excludes most classified projects, so the actual numbers are likely to be much higher.

The Defense Department made greatest use of the technique, with 47 data mining projects to track everything from the academic performance of Navy midshipmen to the whereabouts of ship parts and suspected terrorists.…

Of the 199 data mining projects, 54 use information from the private sector, like credit reports and records of credit card transactions. Seventy-seven projects use data obtained from other federal agencies, like student loan records, bank account numbers and taxpayer identification numbers.

In its catalog of data mining, the accounting office listed these projects:

¶The Internal Revenue Service mines financial data to predict which individual tax returns have the greatest potential for fraud and which corporations are most likely to make improper use of tax shelters.

¶The Defense Intelligence Agency mines data from the intelligence community and searches the Internet to identify people, including United States citizens, who are most likely to have connections to foreign terrorist activities.

¶The Department of Homeland Security seeks clues to possible terrorist activity by looking for patterns in myriad records of crimes, arrests and unusual behavior, traffic tickets and incidents involving the possession of firearms.

James X. Dempsey, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a civil liberties group, said: "In many cases, the private sector is subject to stricter standards than the government. The Fair Credit Reporting Act, for example, imposes limits on commercial uses of personal financial and other data, but there are virtually no limits on government uses."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/27/national/27privacy.html

No comments:

Post a Comment

con·cept