A Homeland Security data-mining program which will crawl the Internet looking for potential threats to the country has come under Congressional scrutiny for a lack of privacy protection, cost controls and program guidelines.

Members of the House Appropriations Committee and House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcomittee have directed the Homeland Security Inspector General to investigate the Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE) program, one of twelve data mining programs currently in use or under development by Homeland Security.

ADVISE is a “technology framework” which can integrate information and facts from many different types and sources of data and can be tailored to specific areas of interest. In its prototype stage, it will “incorporate chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive threat and effects data,” according to an Inspector General’s report (PDF) released last month.

Its purpose, officials have said, is to “connect the dots” and prevent another intelligence failure.

ADVISE can incorporate and analyze large amounts of open source data, such as the content of Internet sites and databases, which has raised privacy concerns. The system could easily be targeted to answer such questions as who might be likely to be associated with anti-war groups or other legitimate political activities.

“A prototype is currently available to analysts in [the Homeland Security] Intelligence and Analysis [unit] using departmental and other data, including some on U.S. citizens,” lawmakers wrote. “The ADVISE program plan, total costs and privacy impacts are unclear and therefore the conferees direct the inspector general to conduct a comprehensive program review and report within nine months of enactment of this act.”

The department has spent about $40 million on the project, lawmakers added.

Critics fear that ADVISE might intrude on the privacy rights of U.S. citizens, especially by trolling their e-mails and blogs. House Appropriations ranking member David Obey, D-Wis., and Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Martin Olav Sabo, D-Minn., asked the Government Accountability Office earlier this year to investigate the program.

“We’ve been long concerned about how the department treats Americans’ privacy and due process rights,” Sabo said during a May markup of the Homeland Security spending bill. “ADVISE appears to be a new variation on the highly controversial Defense Department Total Information Awareness program that was supposed to be terminated in 2003.” — CongressDaily

In related news, Homeland Security has issued a grant to several U.S. universities to develop a natural language processing system which would allow it to monitor negative opinions of the U.S. in overseas publications. Backers swear up and down the system would never be turned inward to monitor U.S. news organizations and Web sites, because that’s not permitted by law. Critics call it “creepy and Orwellian.”

Ultimately, the government could in a semiautomated way track a statement by specific individuals abroad or track reports by particular foreign news outlets or journalists, rating comments about American policies or officials.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, said the effort recalled the aborted 2002 push by a Defense Department agency to develop a tracking system called Total Information Awareness that was intended to detect terrorists by analyzing troves of information.

“That is really chilling,” Mr. Rotenberg said. “And it seems far afield from the mission of homeland security.” — New York Times

The three-year, $2.4 million research grant will develop software intended to identify negative sentiment toward the U.S., which officials said may indicate a potential threat.

You heard right. Having a negative opinion about a U.S. policy means you are a potential terrorist.