Briefs

"Attorney General John Ashcroft recently announced that the Justice Department was loosening its guidelines to allow FBI agents to, among other things, dig into the vast commercial treasure house of data on consumers' buying habits, preferences and traits."

...

"While the FBI hasn't publicly specified how agents would use the data, experts say the bureau likely would employ a sophisticated technique called data mining to spot relationships in enormous amounts of data no human could possibly detect. customers happy."

See http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/politics/3634676.htm

Los Angeles times also writes that FBI is working to reengineer its tremendous pile of disparate information into an efficient data mining system by Sept.11, 2004, while the planned incorporation of artificial-intelligence software will hopefully facilitate the prediction of terrorist threat.

See http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-techno29jul29.story (Access is free; but, first-time visitors must register.)