Wyden worried about federal 'data mining' By Joel Gallob Of the News-Times
One
of the questioners at Senator Ron Wyden's Town Hall meeting at the
Hatfield Marine Science Center last week asked about the authority in a
proposed Higher Education Act that would give the Department of
Education the power to create a federal database of student records. In
reply, Wyden told the questioner the problem is worse than he thought.
The
act, Wyden was told by a county resident, would create a database to
"house student records, their birth date, Social Security number, race,
gender, and other things, as well as grades. It could be used by the
Justice Department as it might want, and it has no protections for the
privacy of the students."
"Every day federal agencies are doing
data mining without any rules," replied Wyden. Data mining is the
practice - sometimes known to those being studied, sometimes not - of
accessing databases and, sometimes, even the computer of the target.
"I've been trying to get from them what they are doing, to force a
debate in Congress about protection of our privacy. We don't even know
what the agencies are doing," Wyden said.
Wyden
recalled that when Admiral John Poindexter had last been employed at
the Pentagon, he came up with two proposals. One was to create a "Total
Information Awareness" program that would merge all the federal and
state databases on Americans in an effort to ferret out possible
terrorists. The other had been a proposal to use the math of games of
chance to create a lottery in which people could bet on where and when
the next terrorist attack might occur, as a way of trying to predict
such attacks.
Wyden recalled that he had forced Poindexter to
resign his Pentagon position by disclosing the terrorism lottery idea
to the media. That idea - which the media as well as Wyden heaped scorn
upon at the time - led to the resignation. But it was the Total
Information Awareness project that worried the senior Oregon Senator
more.
"Talk with my staff," Wyden told this Lincoln County
resident, directing staffer Scott Winkels to get the man's phone
number. "I'll work with you on it."
