Digital spelunking: data mining failure.

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine
• Position: Citings - Brief article

A NEW STUDY from the National Research Council suggests that data mining--high-tech sifting through the digital leavings of our lives--won't catch the next Osama bin Laden.

The idea of scanning Facebook pages, online chats, blogs, Internet-based phones, and GPS tracking data for "unusual" activities was highly touted earlier in the decade, and those mountains of digital data are still tempting for federal spy agencies. But the council's 352-page October 2008 report, rifled Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists, concludes that such efforts will never amount to an effective way to get the bad guys.

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The report was produced by a committee that included Charles Vest, the former president of MIT, and R. Gil Kerlikowske, Seattle's police chief. The authors' ire is aimed not at data mining directed at specific suspected individuals, but rather at broader scanning of the...