New Senate chair voices concerns on information sharing, cybersecurity

New Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, has deep concerns about the privacy implications of the government's movement toward the use of combined government databases to help fight terrorism.

Converging the previously unconnected databases of various agencies that are becoming part of the new Homeland Security Department "gives you the tremendous advantage of being able to better track people who may be of concern, but it also raises the specter of the government using massive databases to compile information on individuals [when] there are no allegations of wrongdoing," Collins said in a Thursday interview with National Journal Group reporters.

She said a central question is, "How do we maintain privacy and civil liberties while at the same time bringing about the sharing of information and the efficiencies and the joint computer systems that will allow us to be more effective in the war against terrorism?"

Of particular concern is the Defense Department's research project to create tools to mine massive amounts of personal data to find terrorists, she said. The Total Information Awareness project being developed under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency "raises extraordinary concerns about individual privacy," Collins said.

Collins said she would either raise that issue in the Senate Armed Services Committee or hold a hearing on it in Governmental Affairs. She said that even though Congress approved millions of dollars in funding for the project under the Defense budget, she had never heard of it until press reports brought it to light.

"I'm a very diligent member of the Armed Services Committee, and I can tell you there was never a discussion of that program," she said.

"It's a difficult issue because on the one hand, Congress is always criticizing agencies that their computers don't talk to each other, that they don't share [information with] each other, and that is a legitimate concern," as the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks showed, she said. "But the flip side of that is if you start amassing all this data and connect it with computers and match files, there are troubling privacy implications."

Collins also is worried about the continuing vulnerabilities of government agencies to cyberattack, she said.

"I think that cybersecurity remains a very important concern and priority," she said. "Our government computers remain vulnerable to cyberattacks, and it seems that every single year, there's a hearing on how vulnerable our computers are, and another [General Accounting Office] report highlighting the vulnerability of our computers, but we don't seem to be making much progress."

She said she already has discussed cybersecurity with Defense officials, and the department is trying to standardize its information technology systems in the hope of reducing vulnerability. That effort has allowed the department to curtail the abuse of credit cards by some federal employees as it obtains the management systems needed to target such activity, she said.