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Homeland Insecurity

Data Mining, Privacy, Disclosure Limitation, and the Hunt for Terrorists

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Terrorism Informatics

Part of the book series: Integrated Series In Information Systems ((ISIS,volume 18))

Following the events of September 11, 2001, there has been heightened attention in the United States and elsewhere to the use of multiple government and private databases for the identification of possible perpetrators of future attacks, as well as an unprecedented expansion of federal government data mining activities, many involving databases containing personal information. There have also been claims that prospective datamining could be used to find the “signature” of terrorist cells embedded in larger networks. We present an overview of why the public has concerns about such activities and describe some proposals for the search of multiple databases which supposedly do not compromise possible pledges of confidentiality to the individuals whose data are included. We also explore their link to the related literatures on privacy-preserving data mining. In particular, we focus on the matching problem across databases and the concept of “selective revelation” and their confidentiality implications.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Statistics, Machine Learning Department, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Stephen E. Fienberg

Authors
  1. Stephen E. Fienberg
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Hsinchun Chen

  2. Clarion University, Clarion, PA, USA

    Edna Reid

  3. The Analysis Corporation, McLean, VA, USA

    Joshua Sinai

  4. University of East London, London, UK

    Andrew Silke

  5. Lauder School of Government & Diplomacy, Herzliya, Israel

    Boaz Ganor

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Fienberg, S.E. (2008). Homeland Insecurity. In: Chen, H., Reid, E., Sinai, J., Silke, A., Ganor, B. (eds) Terrorism Informatics. Integrated Series In Information Systems, vol 18. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-71613-8_10

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