Fergie's Tech Blog

Rogue FBI Letters Hint at Phone Companies Own Data Mining Programs

Ryan Singel writes on Threat Level:

An FBI office under criminal investigation for sending emergency phone record requests to phone companies that included knowingly false statement also included requests for the phone companies to identify the "community of interest" for the targeted phone numbers, according to documents acquired through a government sunshine lawsuit.

Those mysterious requests, first revealed by Eric Lichtblau in the New York Times on Sunday, suggest that the phone companies may be doing their own data mining and profiling on behalf of the United States government.

posted by Fergie @ 9/10/2007 04:46:00 PM