Lawmakers seek probe of Homeland Security data-mining project

Congressional appropriators have directed the Homeland Security Department's inspector general to investigate one of the department's data-mining projects, saying it appears to lack clear guidelines and oversight.

In the fiscal 2007 Homeland Security spending bill -- expected to be signed by President Bush Wednesday -- lawmakers cite concerns over the department's Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE) program.

"A prototype is currently available to analysts in [the Homeland Security] Intelligence and Analysis [unit] using departmental and other data, including some on U.S. citizens," lawmakers wrote. "The ADVISE program plan, total costs and privacy impacts are unclear and therefore the conferees direct the inspector general to conduct a comprehensive program review and report within nine months of enactment of this act."

The department has spent about $40 million on the project, lawmakers added.

Critics fear that ADVISE might intrude on the privacy rights of U.S. citizens, especially by trolling their e-mails and blogs. House Appropriations ranking member David Obey, D-Wis., and Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Martin Olav Sabo, D-Minn., asked the Government Accountability Office earlier this year to investigate the program.

"We've been long concerned about how the department treats Americans' privacy and due process rights," Sabo said during a May markup of the Homeland Security spending bill. "ADVISE appears to be a new variation on the highly controversial Defense Department Total Information Awareness program that was supposed to be terminated in 2003."

A Homeland Security Department spokesman said ADVISE is not yet an active program. When complete, he added, ADVISE will "deliver technology or a set of technologies to provide the capability to connect the dots" of intelligence, a need cited by the 9/11 Commission.

"It extracts important relationships and correlations from a wealth of data and produces actionable intelligence," he said. "What it does perform is data integration at a large scale."

But he would not describe the specific type of data collected through the program.

ADVISE is one of 12 data-mining programs used or under development by the department, the inspector general stated in an August report. That report provided an overview of each program but did not go into detail about their activities, costs and privacy impacts.

The report said ADVISE can be tailored and deployed for specific purposes and areas of interest. "For example, it is being developed to incorporate chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive threat and effects data," the IG said. "Still in development, ADVISE will connect information extracted from text and images, databases, and simulation and modeling tools to provide a watch-and-warning system for analysts."

Appropriators also expressed general concern with the department's possible use or development of data-mining technology, and directed the Homeland Security privacy officer to submit a report on those efforts.

The Homeland Security spokesman said the privacy office is doing a privacy impact assessment for ADVISE, but he did not know when it would be completed.