A few weeks back, we posted a story about an Atlantic article from November, 1967 called, "The National Data Center and Personal Privacy" in which was discussed the idea of a National Data Center, the precursor to Total Information Awareness. It was such a hot topic of the day that Congress held a hearing on computers and the invasion of privacy of US citizens (The computer and invasion of privacy. Hearings, Eighty-ninth Congress, second session. July 26, 27, and 28, 1966. by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Government Operations. Special Subcommittee on Invasion of Privacy.)

I started reading the hearing, and found that Yale Economics Professor Richard Ruggles (NYT obituary from 2001) had also testified before that hearing. So I started poking around about Ruggles, looking in WorldCat and Google Scholar. I found quite a few citations to a document entitled, Report of the Committee on the Preservation and Use of Economic Data submitted to the Social Science Research Council in 1965.

But for such a well-cited document that spawned a Congressional hearing and much worry in the mainstream press about computers and privacy, there were only 3 libraries in the whole country that held the report. Imagine that!

Well, I decided to liberate the report, so -- after much finagling! -- got a copy, scanned it, and uploaded it to the Internet Archive. Score one for the digital public domain!!

I hope to see more libraries listed as having a copy in WorldCat in the near future. And if you've got any fugitive documents laying around your hard drive, send them to us here at admin AT freegovinfo DOT info. We'll make sure they get up on the open Web safe and secure in the Internet Archive!!

Thanks to Docuticker for pointing out this new Congressional Research Report on Federal data mining efforts:

Data Mining and Homeland Security: An Overview (PDF; 231 KB)
RL31798
Source: Congressional Research Service (via Federation of American Scientists)

Aside from cataloging currently known datamining efforts by the federal government, the report identifies four areas of concern:

As with other aspects of data mining, while technological capabilities are important, there are other implementation and oversight issues that can influence the success of a project’s outcome. One issue is data quality, which refers to the accuracy and completeness of the data being analyzed. A second issue is the interoperability of the data mining software and databases being used by different agencies. A third issue is mission creep, or the use of data for purposes other than for which the data were originally collected. A fourth issue is privacy. Questions that may be considered include the degree to which government agencies should use and mix commercial data with government data, whether data sources are being used for purposes other than those for which they were originally designed, and possible application of the Privacy Act to these initiatives.

I've heard people say that data mining by the government is no big deal since advertisers and other corporate interests do it all the time in efforts to focus marketing and improve profits. If we don't have privacy from corporate types, why should the government worry us? Because ratty data used by a marketer might result in a bald man getting shampoo ads, but when the government relies on ratty data for law enforcement, innocent people can get jailed or harrassed.

Hopefully Congress will be more vigilant on this issue.

I have a bunch of tabs open of boingboing posts that I want to share, but it's been such a hectic day (I invited Rick Falkvinge of the Swedish Pirate party to give a talk today at my library!) so I think I'll just list them and let you all sort them out.

• Peer to Patent: keeping the Patent Office honest with community review
• Amazon will distribute the US National Archive on DVD
• NY Public Library giving away free public domain books-on-demand
• Pirate Party founder at Stanford (I'll post the video soon. W00t!)
• Bruce Schneier interviews TSA head Kip Hawley
• Data mining prompted fight over NSA domestic spying program (here's a login-free link to the NYT article)

Now if THIS doesn't convince you that a) blogs are incredibly useful tools for disseminating information and b) boingboing should be read several times a day as a matter of course then I don't know what will convince you. Happy reading :-)

Senators Feingold and Sununu have introduced a bill seeking disclosure of federal data-mining activities.

The legislation:

...requires all federal agencies to report to Congress, in classified form if need be, within 180 days and every year thereafter on certain data mining programs and how these programs impact the civil liberties and privacy of Americans.

While we at FGI would prefer a public report, or at least one that included all 435 Members of Congress, this is a good start towards better oversight of the administrations many reported surveillance programs.

This bill is similar to legislation that died in the last Congress, but will hopefully have a better chance with a Democratic majority in both houses.

Of course if it passes, the President may well try to void the reporting requirements with a Presidential Signing Statement. If that happens, perhaps it will finally provoke judicial scrutiny of such statements.