Privacy vs. Security: New FBI Data-mining Program Sparks Debate
Last week, the FBI’s Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force reported to Congress on its System to Assess Risk, or STAR, the agency’s latest data-mining efforts to profile possible terrorists. Before being rolled out, the FBI asserts that the STAR system would undergo a privacy-impact assessment. And when it does go live, FBI officials promise that
- all the data would be obtained lawfully
- all the data will be contained within the agency
- access to the new system would be limited to trained users
- possible suspects will be assigned risk scores
Despite these assurances, privacy advocates had a strong reaction.
Here’s a sampling of some of the discussion surrounding STAR:
From the FBI report: “STAR does not label anyone a terrorist. Only individuals considered emergent foreign threats (as opposed to other criminal activity such as U.S. bank robbery threats) will be analyzed.”
From ComputerWorld: “Each initiative is designed to supplement, not replace, traditional investigative methods. No action is taken based solely on the analytic products produced by these data mining initiatives,” the DOJ said. As such, they are governed by a slew of laws such as the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2007.
ACLU senior legislative counsel Tim Sparapani: “When you put bad information into a system and you don’t have any mechanism of ensuring the information is of high quality, you’re certain to get bad information spit out on the back end. And that has profoundly negative consequences for the individuals who are wrongly identified as potential terrorists.”
EFF privacy expert David Sobel: “If we can’t assess the accuracy of the information being fed into the system, it’s very hard to assess the effectiveness of the system.”
Mr. Sobel’s concern has merit. And preservation of our democracy depends on the concerns of eternally vigilant citizen watchdogs like the EFF and the ACLU.
The United States has struggled with this debate over privacy versus security since its inception. (See our previous post, Finding a perfect balance between individual privacy and national security.) One thing that is clear about this 200-yr-plus debate is that the opinions and actions of both the defenders of privacy and security must remain engaged and unbending, watchful and most importantly — true to their beliefs to maintain a proper balance.
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