Briefs

Strategypage.com, March 21, 2006: Data mining won't go away, and that's because it works.

Back in November 2002, the media and politicians found out about a government data mining program called Total Information Awareness (TIA). There was much indignation about this assault on American privacy rights, and TIA was shut down by September, 2003. But data mining didn't go away, because it was around before TIA.

Actually, data mining has been around for about a century, with the first widespread use undertaken by direct marketing companies like Sears and Montgomery-Ward. Data mining became a more powerful tool with the introduction, and proliferation, of computers after World War II. The first major data mining success against terrorists was in the 1970s, when West German intelligence and police organizations used data mining to run down local terrorist groups.

Here is the rest of the story.