U.S. data-mining spurs investigations in Latin America. (Up front: news, trends & analysis).

While the value and efficiency of data-mining technology is widely acknowledged, there remains much skepticism about the technology and the privacy issues it may present. Using database exploration, data mining allows users to sort through masses of information, extract specific information in accordance with defined criteria, and then identify patterns.

In February, Congress cut off funding for Total Information Awareness, the Pentagon's controversial data-mining program, and in March an amendment to require congressional oversight of the Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System being developed by the Transportation Security Administration passed the Senate Commerce Committee. More recently, the House Subcommittee on Technology examined the U.S. government's use of data-mining technology.

But for years, Americans who have been using credit cards or subscribing to magazines have been leaving a financial identity trail catalogued by database companies and then resold to the U.S. government. Federal and state governments pay about $50 million annually to comb through the databases of one such company, ChoicePoint, which compiles and sells personal information on U.S. residents gathered from sources such as motor vehicle and credit records, car and boat registrations, liens and deed transfers, and military records. The company's computers are stocked with more than 100 terabytes of storage.

The files can be used by the FBI, U.S. Marshals Service, or Internal Revenue Service to check employee backgrounds, track fugitives, or piece together clues to a person's potential for terrorism. Privacy experts say the government's use of such commercial data circumvents the spirit of the Privacy Act of 1974, which prohibits routine data collection on ordinary Americans.

The U.S. government also has bought access to data on citizens of many other countries. According to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, in 2002, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (now part of the Homeland Security Department) paid $1 million for unlimited access to ChoicePoint's foreign databases.

Over the past two years, the U.S. government has bought access to data on hundreds of millions of residents of 10 Latin American countries--reportedly without their consent or knowledge. According to the Associated Press, this data includes the driving records of 6 million Mexico City residents and the country's entire voter registry--65 million people--which has allowed U.S. officials to track Mexicans entering and living in the United States.

Mexican officials have promised to investigate the report that Mexicans' personal data was being sold to the U.S. government without citizens' knowledge or permission. Mexican federal law and local Mexico City laws prohibit public distribution of personal data contained on voter rolls and driver registration lists. A proposed privacy law under debate could hand prison terms to those who sell information on Mexicans without their permission. The bill, which also would criminalize sending Mexican data to the United States, is being opposed by the U.S. Direct Marketing Association.

Nicaragua President Enrique Bolanos and Costa Rica President Abel Pacheco also have called for investigations into the sale of their citizens' identity files to ChoicePoint.

ChoicePoint has sold entire national identity databases from Latin America since 2001, although it recently stopped updating its citizen registry from Argentina because of a lack of demand and restrictions of a new privacy law. The company said it buys data from subcontractors in Mexico, Columbia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua.

Privacy experts in Latin America say government data, which often originates in agencies that register voters or issue national IDs and driver's licenses, are often sold clandestinely by individual government employees, and they question whether the sales of national citizen registries are legal.

ChoicePoint maintains it has bought the data legally, under contracts with subcontractors who certified they followed privacy laws, and it said it would cooperate with any investigations by Latin American governments.