I received the following press release from Senator Russ Feingold’s office and I want to share it with out of you.
Washington, D.C. – As the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares to focus on the issue of data mining today, U.S. Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and John Sununu (R-NH) have reintroduced legislation requiring federal agencies to report to Congress on the use and development of data mining programs. Feingold and Sununu previously introduced the legislation in the 109th Congress. The legislation requires all federal agencies to report to Congress, in classified form if need be, within 180 days and every year thereafter on certain data mining programs and how these programs impact the civil liberties and privacy of Americans.
“This bill is a way for Congress and the public to finally understand what is going on behind the closed doors of the executive branch so that we can start to have a policy discussion about data mining that is long overdue,” Feingold said. “The possibility of unchecked, secret use of data mining technology threatens one of the most important values that we are fighting for in the war against terrorism – freedom.”
“Data mining and other technologies can be essential tools in detecting predictive patterns and possible outcomes from anonymous records. However, it is imperative that we understand the impact of such technology on Americans’ personal privacy. In order to do this, Congress must be fully informed of the current data mining technologies, new ones that are being developed, the effectiveness of those technologies, and the privacy protections in place,” said Sununu. “Senator Feingold and I have worked on this topic in the past, securing approval of legislative measures to explore and analyze data mining technologies used by the Department of Homeland Security, and the bill that has been introduced today continues an effort to put in place appropriate Congressional oversight.”
Data mining technology is capable of reviewing and analyzing millions of both public and private records on each and every American. Congress needs further information about whether these types of programs are effective in pinpointing terrorists and other criminals, and about the privacy and civil liberties implications of looking for patterns of criminal or terrorist activity in vast quantities of digital data.
I am pleased to see Senator Sununu joining Feingold to push this legislation. I hope that it will garner supermajority support. It’s important that Congress is a full partner in authorizing all intelligence gathering methods. That is one of their most important constitutional duties and we have seen abuses in the past when Congress has been left in the dark.
I also want to congratulate freshmen congressman Patrick Murphy on his appointment to the House Intelligence Committee. I’m green with envy but I know we noe have a good man looking after our security and our rights.
