cargo

When the Department of Homeland Security put into effect its Automated Targeting System this week, it added to a growing list of programs that use information about ordinary Americans to seek after terrorists. An outgrowth of systems used to track cargo, ATS now assigns a "risk score" to Americans crossing the border, using data about them from a wide variety of databases. ATS appears to use data mining to single out people as suspected terrorists or criminals. If data mining worked to catch terrorists, a program like ATS would deserve widespread endorsement. Unfortunately, data mining does not have this capability.