Panel Urges New Protection on Federal 'Data Mining' (NY Times, 17 May 2004)]

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Panel Urges New Protection on Federal 'Data Mining' (NY Times, 
17 May 2004)
Date:   Mon, 17 May 2004 08:14:30 -0400 (EDT)
From:   GLIGOR1 () aol com
To:     dave () farber net



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         May 17, 2004


   Panel Urges New Protection on Federal 'Data Mining'

*By ROBERT PEAR*

ASHINGTON, May 16 - A federal advisory committee says Congress should 
pass laws to protect the civil liberties of Americans when the 
government sifts through computer records and data files for information 
about terrorists.

"The Department of Defense should safeguard the privacy of U.S. persons 
when using data mining to fight terrorism," the panel says in a report 
to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The report, expected to be 
issued in about two weeks, says privacy laws lag far behind advances in 
information and communications technology.

The eight-member panel, which includes former officials with decades of 
high-level government experience, found that the Defense Department and 
many other agencies were collecting and using "personally identifiable 
information on U.S. persons for national security and law enforcement 
purposes." Some of these activities, it said, resemble the Pentagon 
program initially known as Total Information Awareness, which was 
intended to catch terrorists before they struck, by monitoring e-mail 
messages and databases of financial, medical and travel information.

The Pentagon program, later renamed Terrorism Information Awareness, was 
flawed from the start, though its goal was worthwhile, the panel said. 
"Our nation should use information technology and the power to search 
digital data to fight terrorism, but should protect privacy while doing 
so," it concluded. "In developing and using data mining tools, the 
government can and must protect privacy."

Data mining is defined in the report to mean "searches of one or more 
electronic databases of information concerning U.S. persons, by or on 
behalf of an agency or employee of the government."

The panel, the Technology and Privacy Advisory Committee, said the 
Pentagon program was "not the tip of the iceberg, but rather one small 
specimen in a sea of icebergs."

Although the panel was created by Mr. Rumsfeld to scrutinize Pentagon 
programs, it offers sweeping recommendations for privacy safeguards 
throughout the government.

"The privacy issues presented by data mining cannot be resolved by the 
Department of Defense alone," the panel said. "Action by Congress, the 
president and the courts is necessary as well."

One of the panel's most important recommendations is to involve the 
courts in deciding when the government can search electronic databases.

In general, it said, the Defense Department and other federal agencies 
should be required to obtain approval from a special federal court 
"before engaging in data mining with personally identifiable information 
concerning U.S. persons."

To obtain such approval, the government would have to show that it 
needed the information to prevent or respond to terrorism. In an 
emergency, the government would not have to get approval in advance, but 
would need to seek a court order within 48 hours of beginning the search.

Lawyers who work with the panel said its report was sent to the printer 
earlier this month and would probably be issued within two weeks. A copy 
was obtained by The New York Times.

Senator Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who led opposition to the 
Pentagon program, said Sunday that he had not seen the report but that 
it sounded like "a very constructive step."

"This confirms what I've been saying as a member of the Senate 
Intelligence Committee," Mr. Wyden said. "It's possible to fight 
terrorism ferociously without gutting civil liberties. The challenge in 
striking that balance is to have ground rules. I've introduced a bill to 
set rules for data mining by the federal government. I suspect that 
federal agencies are doing an immense amount of data mining."

The panel said existing laws on information privacy were so disjointed 
and out of date that they threatened "efforts to fight terrorism and the 
constitutionally protected rights of U.S. persons," defined as citizens 
and permanent resident aliens.

"Government access to personal data can threaten individual liberty and 
invade constitutionally protected informational privacy rights," the 
panel said, and these risks will grow as the government amasses data on 
United States citizens who have done nothing to warrant suspicion.

Under the panel's recommendations, a federal agency could search an 
electronic database of publicly available information without a court 
order. But the head of the agency would still have to certify in writing 
that the data mining was necessary and appropriate for a lawful purpose. 
This requirement would apply to electronic databases of "information 
that is routinely available without charge or subscription to the public 
- on the Internet, in telephone directories or in public records."

The panel, headed by Newton N. Minow, a former chairman of the Federal 
Communications Commission, acknowledged that its proposals would "impose 
additional burdens on government officials." But, it said, the 
requirements would enhance personal privacy and national security by 
clarifying the rules.

"Good privacy protection in the context of data mining is often 
consistent with more efficient investigation," the panel said.

The greatest risk of data mining by the government is that it "chills 
individual behavior," so people become more likely to follow social 
norms and less likely to dissent, the panel said. The report traces the 
tension between security and liberty to the earliest days of the 
Republic. "Those who trade liberty for safety all too often achieve 
neither," it says, echoing Benjamin Franklin.

One member of the panel, William T. Coleman Jr., who was transportation 
secretary in the Ford administration, filed a lengthy dissent, asserting 
that the proposed restrictions could cripple the fight against 
terrorism. The proposals, he said, go far beyond what is required by the 
Constitution, federal laws or Supreme Court decisions.

But the panel insisted its proposals would not interfere with searches 
based on "particularized suspicion about a specific individual, 
including searches to identify or locate a suspected terrorist." Federal 
agents could still review passenger lists for airlines and cruise ships 
without new regulatory requirements.

Mr. Rumsfeld appointed the panel in February 2003 to quell a political 
uproar over the Pentagon data mining program, headed by John M. 
Poindexter, a retired rear admiral. Congress cut off money for the 
program in September 2003, with certain exceptions described in a 
"classified annex" to the 2004 military spending law.

Members of the panel, besides Mr. Minow and Mr. Coleman, were Floyd 
Abrams, a leading First Amendment lawyer; Zo Baird, president of the 
Markle Foundation, which focuses on information technology; Griffin B. 
Bell, who was attorney general under President Jimmy Carter; Gerhard 
Casper, former president of Stanford University; Lloyd N. Cutler, who 
was White House counsel under Mr. Carter and President Bill Clinton; and 
John O. Marsh Jr., an aide to President Gerald R. Ford who later served 
as secretary of the Army.


Copyright 2004 
<http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html> The New 
York Times Company <http://www.nytco.com/> 

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