New report details data-mining by the FBI
Plans were outlined for a database to rate risks from those identified as potential terrorists.
WASHINGTON - The FBI is gathering and sorting information about Americans to help search for potential terrorists, insurance cheats and crooked pharmacists, according to a government report obtained yesterday.
Records about identity thefts, real-estate transactions, motor-vehicle accidents, and complaints about Internet drug companies are being searched for common threads to aid law-enforcement officials, the Justice Department said in a 38-page report to Congress on the agency's data-mining practices.
In addition, the report disclosed government plans to build a new database to assess the risk posed by people identified as potential or suspected terrorists.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D., Vt.), whose panel oversees the Justice Department, said the database was "ripe for abuse." The American Civil Liberties Union immediately derided the quality of the information that could be used to rate someone as a terror threat.
The report, sent to Congress this week, marked Justice's first public detailing of six of its data-mining tools, which look for patterns to catch criminals. The disclosure was required by lawmakers when they renewed the USA Patriot Act in 2005.
Justice spokesman Dean Boyd said the databases were strictly regulated to protect privacy rights and civil liberties. "Each of these initiatives is extremely valuable for investigators," he said in a statement.
All but one of the databases - the one to track terrorists - have been up and running for several years, the report showed. The lone exception is the System to Assess Risk, or STAR, program to rate the threat posed by people already identified as suspected terrorists or named on terror watch lists.
The system, still under construction, is designed to help counterterror investigators save time by narrowing the field of people who pose the greatest potential threat. It will not label anyone a terrorist, Boyd said.
But it could be based, in part at least, on commercial or public information that might not be accurate - potentially ranking an innocent person as a terror threat.