FBI reveals its data-mining practices

[Guest echtrae]

The thing that I found most curious is this.

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 terrorism watch lists.

So the entire purpose for them to be doing this, still hasn't been done. Instead, they've been tracking everybody else. WTF?

FBI reveals its data-mining practices

[foeofthelance]

So the Federal Bureau of Investigation has a system of computer databases that it uses to help investigate things. That doesn't seem to be all that surprising to me really. The source of the data is either from the government, or from public access records. So they're not hacking privately owned systems, just using what's already normally available to them.

The thing that I found most curious is this.

QUOTE (Lara Jakes Jordan @ July 11, 2007)

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 terrorism watch lists.

echtrae, I think you misread that. I read it as saying that the STAR database is a more recent addition, and that the other databases had simply been going for a longer period of time. I think they were trying to seperate it based on age, not on working capability.

[sarcasm] Oh no! The FBI has figured out spreadsheets! There goes the neighborhood![/sarcasm] Seriously, is this news because the FBI is talking about how they use technology to investigate crimes, or because they're admitting that they use technology to investigate crimes?

[Guest Agaib]

I'd rather have the FBI mining for information rather than the CIA running around looking for subjects for MK-ULTRA 2.0