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Comments Of Sen.
Patrick Leahy
(D-Vt., Ranking
Democratic Member, Senate Judiciary Committee)
On The TIA Data Mining Program
Report To Congress
Released Tuesday By The Pentagon
May 20, 2003
"Renaming
this may make it sound less Orwellian, but
it does not change the intent and scope of
this $53 million program. All the hype
associated with TIA cannot disguise the fact
that - as the report acknowledges - it is far
from clear whether the technology will work
as intended. Before we start pulling
people off airplanes and denying them jobs
based on large-scale data mining, we need to
know whether this technology will generate
too few solid investigative leads at the cost
of too many false alarms and ruined reputations.
"The
Defense Department's expressed commitment to
privacy and civil liberties and its promise
to conduct internal oversight of the TIA program
are welcome. But this is an administration
that has resisted answering even basic questions
about programs like this that tread on the
privacy rights and civil liberties of the American
people. Self-policing is no substitute
for continued congressional oversight of this
novel and controversial technology. Government
data mining largely falls through the cracks
of existing federal privacy laws. The
development of new data mining technologies
will require the careful crafting of new charters
for their use - before they are deployed, not
afterward."
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