Data-mining and profiling shouldn't be anything new to anyone who at least casually reads the newspaper.
ChoicePoint's contract with the State of Florida to provide a central voter file led to
barring thousands from voting in the 2000 presidential election.
The New York Times reported on May 27, 2004 that a GAO survey of federal agencies found 52 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.
That GAO report can be found here: (pdf)
The
Washington Post is reporting today that
The Pentagon pays a private company to compile data on teenagers it can recruit to the military. The Homeland Security Department buys consumer information to help screen people at borders and detect immigration fraud.
As federal agencies delve into the vast commercial market for consumer information, such as buying habits and financial records, they are tapping into data that would be difficult for the government to accumulate but that has become a booming business for private companies.
Industry executives, analysts and watchdog groups say the federal government has significantly increased what it spends to buy personal data from the private sector, along with the software to make sense of it, since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They expect the sums to keep rising far into the future.
Compiling data on teenagers? For recruitment? I wonder how that plays out. I'm imaging a teenager approached by a recruiter who already has a profile of this kid to work with.
It's a booming business, as the paper says. And it's not just for recruiting teenagers into the military. You see, 911 changed everything. It means that the government needs to spend more of your money to acquire information about you, your children and all the dynamics and facets of your recorded relationships because of 911.
The article states one company, Cogito Inc., noted that
data-mining technology once used primarily by commercial clients is now doing booming business with the federal government.
Not a big leap from a credit card company or a supermarket keeping track of your buying habits to the NSA building a profile.
Did we somewhere in there, in signing some contract, sign away certain rights? Rights to information about ourselves that can be studied and sold? Even instigate an investigation into our lives?
One DHS program, CAPPS II, cost $200 million in technology development and it basically failed. The program was meant to screen airline passenger records but couldn't come out with reliable analysis, often to eager to announce passengers as "at risk". The new project is Secure Flight.
Though this is all to find those terrorists, I have never heard the administration mention HOW MANY terrorist there are to warrant such a sifting of US CITIZENS PERSONAL INFORMATION.
Says James Steinberger in the WP article:
"Before you start searching haystacks for needles, you've got to have some reason to believe that the needles are there."
This doesn't appear illegal though it is possibly unnecessary and could easily be used for other purposes.
Maybe I'm off in left field, but it really wouldn't be that much of a leap to establish a "political database" with these information gathering abilities and funding. That would give an advantage when targeting areas and people during a campaign. Would it really be all that impossible for all those records to end up somewhere else?
911 didn't change everything. The Bush Administration's reaction to 911 changed everything.