Briefs

September 16, 2004. By Drew Clark, National Journal's Technology Daily

Federal agencies that use data-mining technologies will be required to submit a report to Congress on the privacy impact of their activities under the Senate-passed fiscal 2005 Homeland Security Department spending bill.

An amendment offered by Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis., was unanimously accepted. The Senate passed the bill, H.R. 4567, on Tuesday on a 93-0 vote. The House version of the bill, passed in June, does not contain such an amendment.

"At the same time that the [Bush] administration has been making it harder and harder for the public to learn what government agencies are up to, the government and its private sector partners have been quietly building more and more databases to learn and store more information about the American people," Leahy said in a statement.

The amendment essentially adopted the approach of S. 1544, a Feingold-Leahy bill that would have required annual data-mining reports. As amended, the appropriations bill would only require a single report to Congress, within 90 days of the end of fiscal year that ends on Sept. 30, 2005.

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