Leahy: Planned Terrorism Database 'Ripe for Abuse'

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has derided a 38-page report from the Justice Department on the FBI's data mining practices, saying it "raises more questions than it answers." The Associated Press reports that Leahy also said that a planned government database mentioned in the report that would determine the threat posed by potential or suspected terrorists is "ripe for abuse."

The report, which was required by lawmakers when they renewed the Patriot Act in 2005, was given to Congress on Tuesday. It showed that the FBI is using databases to find "potential terrorists, insurance cheats and crooked pharmacists."

The Washington Post reports that the system the FBI is developing to look for terrorists is called the System to Assess Risk, or STAR.

Leahy's concerns about STAR center on the government's lack of accountability in the way it collects and uses personal information. "The Bush administration has expanded the use of this technology, often in secret, to collect and sift through Americans' most sensitive personal information," he said.

While the government insists the system would be secure, the ACLU worries that bad information will get into the system and innocent people will be labeled as terrorists. And the ABC News blog The Blotter reports that other experts are concerned that the FBI's plans to use private companies to store collected phone and Internet records is just a way to skirt a law that forbids the agency from holding the records.

It's not the first time the FBI's methods of data mining have been questioned in recent months. In June, The Blotter reported that lawmakers from both parties were worried about another proposed FBI plan to gather information, the National Security Analysis Center, which "would bring together nearly 1.5 billion records created or collected by the FBI and other government agencies."

2:55 PM ET | 07-11-2007 | permalink