Taking Spying to Higher Level, Agencies Look for More Ways to Mine Data - New York Times

Taking Spying to Higher Level, Agencies Look for More Ways to Mine Data - New York Times

Data mining is seen as a bad thing by the paranoid and those with highly principled views that may ignore the reality of our world. In an evil world with terrorists trying to do us harm and criminals breaking the law powerful data mining tools should be available to government and law enforcement to do their job.

Of course, the fear is that these tools will be misused by unscrupulous characters for personal gain. Other fears arise because the tools are not yet perfect, and someone could be wrongly tagged as an evildoer.

All this controversy swirls around one key factor: do you trust your government to 'do no evil.' The Constitution protects against unreasonable search and seizure, but in an evil world of terrorists and crooks, what is unreasonable? This is not at all like someone breaking into your house in the dead of night searching for people or things.

I am perfectly comfortable as a law abiding person to have my email and phone records part of a database that is regularly mined by my federal government, as long as I can reasonably trust that government.