Committee on Technical and Privacy Dimensions of Information for Terrorism Prevention and Other National Goals

Overview
The Committee on Technical and Privacy Dimensions of Information for Terrorism Prevention and Other National Goals was established by the National Research Council. The Committee consisted of 21 people with a broad range of expertise in the scientific, government, and private sector communities. It was co-chaired by former Defense Secretary William J. Perry and Charles M. Vest of the National Academy of Engineering.

The Committee conducted a study of data mining for counterterrorism and homeland security purposes and concluded that:

"[m]odern data collection and analysis techniques have had remarkable success in solving information-related problems in the commercial sector; for example, they have been successfully applied to detect consumer fraud. But such highly automated tools and techniques cannot be easily applied to the much more difficult problem of detecting and preempting a terrorist attack, and success in doing so may not be possible at all."