Feel safer with massive datamining looking out for terrorists? Safer from whom?
Yet another problem is the perennial problem of false positives (about which I wrote here when the Total Information Awareness program was being considered). Even if an accurate profile of potential terrorists is drawn, the fact that such a vanishingly small percentage of us are terrorists means that the vast majority of the people investigated will be innocent.
- John Allen Paulos, Of wiretaps, Google Searches, and handguns
Ask yourself; if the data mining were “an amazing 99% effective” at finding people with terrorist ties, how many non-terrorists would find themselves in a room being interrogated? Check out the article if the answer doesn’t come to mind after a moment’s reflection. Given the lack of legal protections for suspected terrorists, it isn’t a comforting thought.