The Office of the Director of National Intelligence says it does not practice data mining in the narrow sense of searching databases to find anomalous patterns that could be indicative of terrorist activity. So the latest ODNI annual report to Congress (pdf) on data mining programs (the third such report) has little new information to offer.
Instead of data mining, narrowly defined, the ODNI and other intelligence agencies use “link analysis,” which involves searches that begin with a known or suspected terrorist or intelligence target and work backwards and forwards from there. But such “link analysis” is outside the strict definition of “data mining,” ODNI says, and so it is not discussed further in the new annual report.
The proposed Office will resurrect the long-closed Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), the archive of which has been maintained by FAS for decades at https://ota.fas.org/.
If Congress needs help understanding the risks and rewards of a piece of technology, they shouldn’t have to rely solely on the sparknotes from a salesman. The rub is much simpler: Congress needs nerds.
If we set up the new OTA to do its job well, members will see it as the first stop to see what issues are lurking around the corner. They will bring their questions early. And they will keep coming back for more.
Even the best-designed policy rests on assumptions about who will staff it, how it will be funded, whether the responsible institutions have ever coordinated, and if the goals are achievable.