Briefs

A panel of legislators, civil libertarians, researchers, and others gathered in Washington, D.C., by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies on Oct. 21 failed to reach an accord on the best strategy for employing data-mining technology to uphold the security of the United States without infringing on citizens' privacy. Potomac research fellow and panel moderator Daniel Gallington suggested the creation of a searchable database by pooling the legal information resources of the CIA, FBI, and local law enforcement, but Peter Raven-Hansen of George Washington University countered that even the tiniest error could allow innocent people to fall under suspicion. For one thing, the FBI has the authority to investigate large portions of the populace without telling them; this raises the question of whether citizens who have participated in activities linked, however tenuously, to terrorism--taking flying lessons or visiting a mosque, for instance--should be lumped into the database.

Dr. Robert Popp, who managed the Pentagon's now-defunct Terrorism Information Awareness project for a short time, suggested that broad searches of such a database should initially be anonymous, so that data on potentially suspicious behavior is collated statistically rather than by name; specific names would only be disclosed in more focused investigations by order of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a measure that riled civil libertarians.

See full story from Wired.