Briefs

ACM Washington Update, Vol. 11.4, May 8, 2007

The Senate Judiciary Committee sent S236, the Federal Agency Data Mining Reporting Act of 2007 to the Senate floor by a voice vote. The bill would require the federal government to report annually on the development and use of technologies that would mine data for patterns of criminal or terrorist activity. Any classified, sensitive or proprietary information on data mining would be placed in an annex not available to the public. The main debate in the committee's deliberations was over penalties for leaking material in the annex. The debate focused not on having penalties, but whether or not existing laws covered such leaks.

This bill specifically focuses on the federal government and technologies that it develops for data mining. No legislation currently covers any commercially developed or implemented technologies, though they would be covered under the bill if the federal government made use of them.

The bill still need to be approved by the Senate and go through the same procedure in the House.

http://www.acm.org/usacm/update/

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