http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/data-mining-for.html

The government should not be building predictive data-mining programs systems that attempt to figure out who among millions is a terrorist, a privacy and terrorism commission funded by Homeland Security reported Tuesday. The commission found that the technology would not work and the inevitable mistakes would be un-American.

The committee, created by the National Research Council in 2005, also expressed doubts about the effectiveness of technology designed to decide from afar whether a person had terrorist intents, saying false positives could quickly lead to privacy invasions.

"Automated identification of terrorists through data mining (or any other known methodology) is neither feasible as an objective nor desirable as a goal of technology development efforts," the report found. "Even in well-managed programs, such tools are likely to return significant rates of false positives, especially if the tools are highly automated."

http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=11255

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20080605p2a00m0na008000c.html

School apologizes for teacher's comment that 9/11 was inside job

FUJISAWA, Kanagawa -- A junior high school has apologized for a teacher's comment in classes that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were carried out by the United States.

In late May, the teacher told classes at Fujisawa Municipal Zengyo Junior High School that the synchronized terrorist attacks were "written and acted out" by the United States.

On Sunday, the school arranged a meeting attended by PTA officials and offered an apology.

Education board officials who received a report from the junior high school said the teacher was in charge of social studies. He reportedly made the comments to students in four second-year classes between May 26 and 29.

One student asked their parents if the terrorist attacks were really a put-up job, and the surprised parents filed protests with the school and the Fujisawa Municipal Board of Education, asking whether such comments in class were appropriate.

An education board official said that the teacher had been trying to make a point but used a bad example.