Data Mining Disclosure Bill Moves Forward

The Senate Judiciary Committee last week approved legislation that would require federal agencies to report any data-mining activities to Congress. The issue has become a hot topic as increasingly large collections of private information on American citizens are uploaded into huge centralized databases.

Introduced by Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wisconsin), the Federal Agency Data Mining Reporting Act would mandate that agencies submit information to Congress about:

--the nature of their data mining activities
--the technology involved
--the data sources used
--the chances for success
--the ability to meet privacy and civil liberty thresholds

Agencies would have to file reports on their data-mining operations at least once a year, and the reports would be made available to the public. Committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) said data mining is "ripe for abuse" and cited a May 2004 GAO report that mentioned around 200 different government data-mining programs. One of them, the DHS ADVISE program is already suspected of having violated privacy laws.