Off to the data mines
According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon and Homeland Defense are paying commercial companies for data-mined lists. (yawn) This story has been reported for over a year and what's really amazing is that no one is doing anything about it...yet.
The basic idea here is that the government uses commercial data companies to build custom lists and sell it to them, usually through a classified contract. They do this because they can circumvent the few remaining restrictions on government collection and use of private data by using a corporate shill.
This will undoubtedly turn out to be a huge scandal in two years. Right now, Congress and most of the press continue to ignore the story, yet it's almost certainly going to explode when the details become public. Why? Because these agencies are doing things like using credit reports to determine a subject's terrorist risk profile or having companies scrub psychographic marketing data to find kids who might be susceptible to a military recruiting pitch.
Why does Congress ignore things like this? If the executive branch is clearly trying to circumvent legislative restrictions, I would think that this at least calls for an investigation.
Posted on June 16, 2006
