A mathematician looks at data mining in the War! On! Terror!
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.