Briefs

Brendan Coyne, The New Standard

Jul 26 - A single sentence tacked onto last Thursday�s US House of Representatives bill to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act has the Bush administration putting pressure on fellow Republican lawmakers to shield the Justice Department from disclosing data-mining efforts. The New York Times reports that the White House and allies are demanding lawmakers remove the language from the measure before it even makes it into the joint negotiating committee with Senate leaders.

At issue is an amendment that requires the Department of Justice to report to Congress on government efforts to collect and store personal information about Americans. The proposal was offered by Representative Howard L. Berman (D-California).

Government data-mining efforts have come under fire from the right and left. In a position paper last fall, Jim Harper, director of information policy studies with the libertarian Cato Institute criticized as bad policy Bush administration efforts to create data-mining programs.

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