[privacy] U.S. Government Increasingly Turning to Data Mining

["Fergie" <fergdawg () netzero net>]

Via The Washington Post.

[snip]

The Pentagon pays a private company to compile data on teenagers it can
recruit to the military. The Homeland Security Department buys consumer
information to help screen people at borders and detect immigration fraud.

As federal agencies delve into the vast commercial market for consumer
information, such as buying habits and financial records, they are
tapping into data that would be difficult for the government to
accumulate but that has become a booming business for private companies.

Industry executives, analysts and watchdog groups say the federal
government has significantly increased what it spends to buy personal
data from the private sector, along with the software to make sense of
it, since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They expect the sums to keep
rising far into the future.

Privacy advocates say the practice exposes ordinary people to ever more
scrutiny by authorities while skirting legal protections designed to
limit the government's collection and use of personal data.

[snip]

More here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/14/AR2006061402063.html

- ferg


--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg () netzero net or fergdawg () sbcglobal net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/

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