The great thing about the FBI’s new anti-terrorism database
Whenever a government agency mentions their databases (existing or under-construction), issues like privacy and accountability are always bound to surface. In the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy, for instance, many people pointed to holes in the federal mental-health database. Only 22 states (Virginia included) supply data to that FBI database, and they only deliver partial data (according to NC Mental Hope News). Of course parties on both sides admit that Cho Seung-Hui should have been denied the purchase of a gun based on his mental health history. However, the database lacked a complete record on him.
Another FBI database catalogs criminal history and is accessible by state and local law-enforcement. However, those criminal offenses have traditionally included around 247,500 immigration warrants. A Washington Post article about the database points out that the DOJ was given “broad authority” to use the database post-9/11. A federal court in New York ruled in 2004 that “the government had to remove civil immigration records from the database,” but the judge stopped short of enforcing the order once the government expunged the record of the plaintiff in the case.
With these histories (and others) in mind, privacy-rights advocates and data-miners alike are watching closely as the FBI attempts to roll out a new database aimed at boosting its anti-terrorism campaign. Representatives Brad Miller (Dem-N.C.) and James Sensenbrenner (Rep-Wis.) two heads of the House’s Science and Technology investigations subcommittee, want Congress to weigh the database’s utility against issues of privacy. They quote IBM identity resolution engineer Jeff Jonas as saying that
“data-mining for terrorism discovery … would waste taxpayer dollars, needlessly infringe on privacy and civil liberties and misdirect the valuable time and energy of the men and women in the national security community.”
However, on his own blog, Jonas argues that what he calls “predicate-based link analysis,” when applied to just such a database, “would have produced a small universe of [false positives] and would have exposed the likes of Mohamed Atta.” Presumably, the false positives could then be weeded out under closer scrutiny, and the real terrorist threats could be thwarted. Hopefully, as the database undergoes continued development and analysis, the experts involved will consider those results in the balance between privacy and security.
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