Perilous

Congress mandates that the Department of Homeland Security conduct special assessments whenever it builds new counterterrorism databases that explain how the systems might negatively impact the privacy of everyday Americans.

We keep track of these assessments at the Center for Investigative Reporting, and the latest offers insight into the warmly titled database “ICEPIC,” short for ICE Pattern Analysis and Information Collection. You can read that as data mining, a phrase authorities prefer to avoid because it tends to freak people out. That concern apparently didn’t extend to ICEPIC.

The system has actually been around for awhile, but as far as privacy implications go, the latest document has this to say:

ICEPIC is a toolset that assists ICE law enforcement agents and analysts in identifying suspect identities and discovering possible non-obvious relationships among individuals and organizations that are indicative of violations of the customs and immigration laws as well as possible terrorist threats and plots.

ICE Pattern Analysis and Information Collection