US concludes on network data mining…

Photo: crazyemt on Flickr.

“It doesn’t really work.”

From Cnet (via BoingBoing):

A National Research Council report, years in the making and scheduled to be released Tuesday, concludes that automated identification of terrorists through data mining or any other mechanism “is neither feasible as an objective nor desirable as a goal of technology development efforts.” Inevitable false positives will result in “ordinary, law-abiding citizens and businesses” being incorrectly flagged as suspects.

The whopping 352-page report, called “Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists,” amounts to at least a partial repudiation of the Defense Department’s controversial data-mining program called Total Information Awareness, which was limited by Congress in 2003.

Whoops… Where did the terrorism argument go Mr.Tolgfors? Lost it did ya’?

More seriously though, I hope that our Swedish politicians will read and understand the facts in the report… It’s just ridiculous that they haven’t done so already.

Read more at CNet!