Briefs

March 21, 2007

A massive new data mining project planned by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security raises privacy concerns that must be identified and mitigated sooner than later, government auditors said Wednesday.

According to a new Government Accountability Office report (PDF), DHS has not yet analyzed the privacy implications of the ADVISE (Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement) tool. The department has said it is counting on the tool to aid in detecting threats to the homeland by sifting through mounds of information.

Before DHS proceeds, it should scrutinize a number of potential privacy risks, including "the potential for erroneous association of individuals with crime or terrorism through data that are not accurate for that purpose, the misidentification of individuals with similar names, and the use of data that were collected for other purposes," the GAO report said.

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