Washington – The FBI is gathering and sorting information about Americans to help search for potential terrorists, insurance cheats and crooked pharmacists, according to a government report obtained Tuesday.
Records about identity thefts, real-estate transactions, motor- vehicle accidents and complaints about Internet drug companies are being searched for common threads to aid law enforcement officials, the Justice Department said in a report to Congress on the agency’s data-mining practices.
In addition, the report disclosed government plans to build a new database to assess the risk posed by people identified as potential or suspected terrorists.
Senate Judiciary chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., whose committee oversees the Justice Department, said the database was “ripe for abuse.” The American Civil Liberties Union immediately derided the quality of the information that could be used to score someone as a terror threat, noting it could be based, in part at least, on commercial or public information that might not be accurate.
The report, sent to Congress this week, marked the department’s first public detailing of six of its data-mining tools. The disclosure was required by lawmakers when they renewed the USA Patriot Act in 2005.
Justice spokesman Dean Boyd said the databases are strictly regulated to protect privacy rights and civil liberties: “Each of these initiatives is extremely valuable … in order to detect potential criminal activity and focus resources appropriately.”
