Briefs

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER, June 12, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The FBI wants to compile a massive computer database and analyze it for clues to unmask terrorist sleeper cells. Two congressmen are worried about whether the bureau will protect the privacy of U.S. citizens.

Reps. Brad Miller, D-N.C., and James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., the chairman and ranking Republican on the House Science and Technology investigations subcommittee, asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate the proposal. Their June 4 letter to GAO was released Tuesday.

Miller and Sensenbrenner questioned both the FBI's ability to properly manage such a large trove of data and whether predictive data-mining even works or just falsely casts suspicion on innocent people.

... Eleven workers in a Proactive Data Exploitation unit will be assigned to ferret out patterns of suspicious behavior in the data, the congressmen wrote.

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