Federal agencies aren't protecting privacy, report says.

• Author: Swartz, Nikki
• Position: UP FRONT: News, Trends & Analysis

A recent Government Accountability Office report--"Data Mining: Agencies Have Taken Key Steps to Protect Privacy in Selected Efforts, but Significant Compliance Issues Remain"--found that federal agencies are failing to adequately protect privacy rights when using data mining or knowledge discovery tools to find patterns and associations in massive amounts of information.

The report revealed that although most agencies are notifying the public that they are using personal information, few are...