Senator seeks ban on Defense, Homeland Security data mining

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., said Thursday he would introduce legislation to halt funding for controversial data mining projects at the Defense and Homeland Security departments. The move comes amid growing protests by privacy advocates and civil libertarians that the Bush administration is encroaching upon civil rights with many of its new homeland security initiatives.

The bill would place a moratorium on data mining efforts at the Defense and Homeland Security departments until Congress has reviewed the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness (TIA) project. That project seeks ways to use data mining techniques to cull through public and private databases of various transactions-such as credit card purchases or phone records-to look for suspicious patterns that might indicate a person or group is plotting a terrorist attack.

"This unchecked system is a dangerous step that threatens one of the values we are fighting for-freedom," Feingold said at a press conference. "The administration has a heavy burden of proof that such extreme measures are necessary."

A statement by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which oversees the TIA project, challenged those criticisms, saying the agency "is not building a 'supercomputer' to snoop into the private lives or track the everyday activities of American citizens."

The statement, posted on DARPA's Web site, said the TIA project would use computer programs to translate publicly available information, such as press reports, from foreign languages. It would also analyze data such as visa applications, car rentals and airline ticket purchases obtained only from databases that the government could legally access, the statement added.

Robert Popp, the TIA program's deputy director, said that project engineers are looking for ways to build privacy protections into the system. The DARPA statement said the goal of such protections "is to achieve a quantum leap in privacy technology to ensure data is protected and used only for lawful purposes."

DARPA also has revised a diagram of its vision of the TIA project on its Web site to include mentions of privacy safeguards and restrictions. The agency also has removed the TIA project's controversial logo, which depicted an eye atop a pyramid, casting its gaze over the earth.

These moves haven't satisfied privacy groups, who insist that the program's very name shows it seeks sweeping access to myriad databases, and that privacy cannot reasonably be protected from a technology effort of such an ambitious scope.

"The administration's assurances that a data mining system will not abuse our privacy rights ring hollow," Feingold said, "particularly to those of us who questioned the breathtaking new federal powers in the USA Patriot Act." That law, as well as other measures undertaken in the name of homeland security and the war on terrorism, have expanded the government's ability to share intelligence information among agencies and to place individuals under law enforcement surveillance.

Presumably, Feingold's amendment wouldn't prohibit some data mining projects currently under way in the Homeland Security Department. For instance, the Customs Service and the Coast Guard both rely on data mining and analysis technology to conduct intelligence operations, which help officials target shipping containers to inspect for weapons and assist in drug seizures.

A statement released by Feingold's office defined data mining as "a broad search of public and nonpublic databases in the absence of a particularized suspicion about a person, place or thing."

The term data mining, however, is defined differently by many technologists, who apply it to any electronic analyses that look for patterns among different sets of data that are somehow related to one another. A marketing company, for instance, might use data mining to correlate income figures to zip codes, hoping to tailor product advertisements to certain demographic groups. The Census Bureau uses statistical analysis-an underpinning of data mining-to help allocate federal poverty relief funds.

On Wednesday, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., also introduced legislation to curb data mining, but limited it only to funding for the TIA project or any efforts to transfer that project out of the Pentagon.

DARPA has refused to make public some details about the project. The agency has been sued in federal court for not releasing documents about TIA to one civil rights group. Thursday, a federal judge ordered the Defense Department to grant the group's request. Wyden is concerned that Congress has been left in the dark, his spokeswoman said. Based on what is known about the project, it "crosses the lines" of privacy, she added.

Wyden wants to "put the brakes on this project," the spokeswoman said, and also to remind people that Congress has oversight authority on this subject and all other data mining initiatives currently under way in the government.

A spokesman for the Office of Homeland Security said the department hasn't decided how it would use data mining techniques.

The spokesman added that the administration thinks Congress should focus on passing a budget to fund the new department-something it hasn't done-rather than debate "hypotheticals."