• SUPPORT CATO
• FOR STUDENTS
• FOR MEDIA
• FREE NEWSLETTERS

• HOME

• ABOUT

• BLOG

• BOOKSTORE

• EVENTS

• EXPERTS

• MULTIMEDIA

• PUBLICATIONS

• RESEARCH AREAS

• SPEAKERS BUREAU

• SUPPORT CATO

• CATO UNBOUND

• DOWNSIZING
  GOVERNMENT.ORG

• ELCATO.ORG

Homepage Archives

Data Mining Doesn't Catch Terrorists

Monday 11 December 2006

In the wake of 9/11, a jittery Washington embraced any measure that intelligence and law-enforcement agencies said would help prevent further terrorist attacks. Data mining was dubbed an essential tool in the war on terror, with the agencies arguing that comprehensive monitoring of personal data would assist in catching terrorists. In "Effective Counter-Terrorism and the Limited Role of Predictive Data Mining," Cato scholar Jim Harper and Jeff Jonas, distinguished engineer and chief scientist with IBM's Entity Analytic Solutions Group, demonstrate that data mining is costly, ineffective, and a violation of fundamental liberty.