Data mining sparks debate among lawmakers, administration

Lawmakers and administrators sparred over the use and treatment of government data mining at a hearing held by a House Government Reform subcommittee.

Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., defended the use of data mining at a Tuesday hearing even as the White House Office of Management and Budget's top information official rebuked a controversial project to screen airline passengers.

Speaking of the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System (CAPPS II) under development, OMB Associate Director Mark Forman said, "CAPPS II was not approved by OMB to proceed on the pace they seem to want to proceed."

"I have a huge spotlight on that project. They are late in getting back the information that they need to proceed," continued Forman, who oversees information technology and e-government.

He was responding to a question from Rep. William Clay, D-Mo., who referenced CAPPS II and asked, "What is the OMB doing to prohibit discrimination in air transportation?"

While touching on CAPPS II and the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness (TIA) research project, the hearing focused on lesser known federal and state data-mining projects.

"There are a number of proven uses for this technology," said Adam Putnam, R-Fla., chairman of the Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census. He added: "We must always be vigilant of any potential encroachment on the privacy of the American public."

Davis was critical of any attempts to set limits on the use of information systems by either the government or the private sector. Referring to the role of data-sharing in the economy, he said, "The oil of today is information: how we identify it and how we get it out of the ground."

If we had EPA regulations on oil in the early part of the 20th century, we never would have got it out of the ground," Davis said. "We need to be slow about coming in and regulating" use of data-mining technologies that would foreclose market opportunities.

The remark prompted a rebuttal from George Washington University law professor Jeffrey Rosen: "The complete transparency of information-which many Silicon Valley executives are arguing for-would not be consistent with the Fourth Amendment," Rosen said, referring to the constitutional bar on unreasonable searches.

In his testimony, Rosen distinguished between what he called "personal dataveillance"-the targeting surveillance of individuals identified as dangerous-with "mass dataveillance" of the sort contemplated by the TIA.

The Constitution's framers sought to avoid such mass surveillance when they barred "general warrants" that would have allowed British soldiers to rummage through individuals' homes searching for incriminating evidence, he said, adding that CAPPS II, which seeks to check airline traveler information with private databases and an FBI "watch list," might fall into this category.

But Forman, who testified that government data mining had been effective in cutting fraud and waste, offered a different objection.

"We could spend $100 million on an information technology system with terrific screens, but at the end of the day, if it doesn't somehow lower the risk, I would have to say that it is not a good IT investment for the federal government."