Briefs

By Hiawatha Bray | August 15, 2005

Did US military spies finger Mohammed Atta as an Al Qaeda terrorist a year before the Sept. 11 attacks? A US congressman says yes; leaders of the bipartisan 9/11 investigating commission say no.

But the controversy should remind us of one indisputable fact: A technology that may have helped spot Atta and other terrorists is being suppressed by Congress, for no particularly good reason.

That technology is ''data mining," the use of sophisticated software and powerful computers to spot patterns of activity hidden in vast amounts of apparently random data. It's used routinely by businesses seeking new ways to empty our wallets.

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