U.S. government still mining data.

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

Privacy concerns prompted Congress to shut down the Pentagon's $54 million Total Information Awareness (TIA) program last September, but according to a recent congressional report, government computers have not stopped combing private records.

According to the General Accounting Office (GAO) report, the Pentagon agency that handled TIA is not working oil any data mining projects, but several other agencies are mining private sources, intelligence reports, and Internet searches "to identify terrorists or U.S. citizens connected to foreign terrorism activities."

The GAO reports that current federal data-mining efforts that are taking place with little, if any, oversight from Congress or the public include:

* Department of Homeland Security--Its Incident Data Mart was designed to assemble data from state, local, and federal police agencies to find possible terrorist activities; "incidents" searched include any event involving a law enforcement or government agency for which a log was created, including traffic tickets, drug arrests, or firearm possessions.

* FBI--The agency has compiled information from its files, those of other federal agencies, and public data sources such as LexisNexis and court records to determine unlawful entry into the United States by potential terrorists.

* Defense Intelligence Agency--Four projects mine data from the intelligence community and Internet searches to identify foreign terrorists or U.S. citizens connected to foreign terrorism activities.

* Department of Education--Project Strikeback was designed to compare names in the department's databases with records supplied by the FBI and search for "anomalies" indicating terrorist activities.

The report states that data mining is "ubiquitous" in the U.S. government. The New York Times reported: "In canvassing federal agencies, the [GAO] found that 52 were systematically sifting through computer data bases. Those 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 such as names, e-mail addresses, Social Security numbers, and driver's license numbers. According to the Times, the GAO report provides the first authoritative estimate of the extent of data mining by the government. The Defense Department made the greatest use of the technique, with 47 data mining projects to track everything from Navy midshipmen's academic reports to the whereabouts of ship parts...