FBI to profile terror suspects using rating system

Washington Post:

The Federal Bureau of Investigations is developing a computer-profiling system that would enable investigators to target possible terror suspects, according to a Justice Department report submitted to Congress yesterday.

The System to Assess Risk, or STAR, assigns risk scores to possible suspects based on a variety of information, similar to the way a credit bureau assigns a rating based on a consumer's spending behavior and debt. The program focuses on foreign suspects but also includes data about some U.S. residents. A prototype is expected to be tested this year.

Justice Department officials said the system offers analysts a powerful new tool for finding possible terrorists. They said it is an effort to automate what analysts have been doing manually.

"STAR does not label anyone a terrorist," the report said. "Only individuals considered emergent foreign threats (as opposed to other criminal activity such as U.S. bank robbery threats) will be analyzed."

Some lawmakers said, however, that the report raises new questions about the government's power to use personal information and intelligence without accountability.

"The Bush administration has expanded the use of this technology, often in secret, to collect and sift through Americans' most sensitive personal information," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which received a copy of the report on data-mining initiatives.

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Leahy has always been a big terrorist rights supporter so its is not surprising he would want to undercut efforts to identify suspects beforehand. the Leahy model is a criminal case where you don't look for a suspect until you have a corpus delicti. We could have a lot of dead Americans using the Leahy model.