Privacy Watch: Declassified Files Detail Massive FBI Data-Mining Project

By GottaLaff

While I was data-mining the Internets, I came across this:

A fast-growing FBI data-mining system billed as a tool for hunting terrorists is being used in hacker and domestic criminal investigations, and now contains tens of thousands of records from private corporate databases, including car-rental companies, large hotel chains and at least one national department store, declassified documents obtained by Wired.com show.

Headquartered in Crystal City, Virginia, just outside Washington, the FBI’s National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC) maintains a hodgepodge of data sets packed with more than 1.5 billion government and private-sector records about citizens and foreigners, the documents show, bringing the government closer than ever to implementing the “Total Information Awareness” system first dreamed up by the Pentagon in the days following the Sept. 11 attacks.

Such a system, if successful, would correlate data from scores of different sources to automatically identify terrorists and other threats before they could strike. The FBI is seeking to quadruple the known staff of the program.

But the proposal has long been criticized by privacy groups as ineffective and invasive. Critics say the new documents show that the government is proceeding with the plan in private, and without sufficient oversight.

Much, much more here.

H/t: Gr8RDH, mparent77772

Obama administration launches data Web site

Jeebus, pretty soon we're going to need a database of their websites...

WASHINGTON (CNN) – The Obama administration is making government data more accessible with the launch of a new Web site Thursday.

An Office of Management and Busget representative tells CNN that in the next two to three weeks, the administration expects to use the new site, data.gov, to host more than 200,000 'datasets' — groupings of governmental information like the results of the last government survey of residential energy use.

The site is currently home to 46 'raw' datasets and 27 information tools, the OMB said in a statement announcing the site.

F.B.I. and States Vastly Expand DNA Databases

By GottaLaff

I bet the Rushpublics will demand that their DNA secede from the United States to avoid government overreach:

Law enforcement officials are vastly expanding their collection of DNA to include millions more people who have been arrested or detained but not yet convicted. The move, intended to help solve more crimes, is raising concerns about the privacy of petty offenders and people who are presumed innocent.

Until now, the federal government genetically tracked only convicts. But starting this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will join 15 states that collect DNA samples from those awaiting trial and will collect DNA from detained immigrants — the vanguard of a growing class of genetic registrants.

The F.B.I., with a DNA database of 6.7 million profiles, expects to accelerate its growth rate from 80,000 new entries a year to 1.2 million by 2012 — a 17-fold increase. F.B.I. officials say they expect DNA processing backlogs — which now stand at more than 500,000 cases — to increase.

Law enforcement officials say that expanding the DNA databanks to include legally innocent people will help solve more violent crimes. They point out that DNA has helped convict thousands of criminals and has exonerated more than 200 wrongfully convicted people.

But criminal justice experts cite Fourth Amendment privacy concerns and worry that the nation is becoming a genetic surveillance society.