Security and tech guru Bruce Schneier writes the definitive rebuttal of data mining as a counterterrorism tool.

Rule number one:

Data mining works best when there's a well-defined profile you're searching for, a reasonable number of attacks per year, and a low cost of false alarms.

Example: credit card fraud. By examining records of your transactions, credit card companies can spot a spending pattern that indicates something nefarious may be afoot. It's different with terrorism:

Terrorist plots are different. There is no well-defined profile, and attacks are very rare. Taken together, these facts mean that data mining systems won't uncover any terrorist plots until they are very accurate, and that even very accurate systems will be so flooded with false alarms that they will be useless.

I have never understood how the Government could get the death penalty for Moussaoui on the theory that he was responsible for the 9/11 deaths not through his participation in the plot but through his failure to tell authorities what he knew so it could be stopped.

It seems the Judge today had the same concern.

"I must warn the government it is treading on delicate legal ground here," U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said at the conclusion of the day's testimony, after the jury had left the courtroom. "I don't know of any case where a failure to act is sufficient for the death penalty as a matter of law."

More than 250 doctors around the world have joined a harshly worded criticism of the U.S. over the force-feeding of Guantanamo prisoners. Their letter has been published in the medical journal, The Lancet.

The open letter in the Lancet was signed by more than 250 top doctors from seven countries - the UK, the US, Ireland, Germany, Australia, Italy and the Netherlands. "We urge the US government to ensure that detainees are assessed by independent physicians and that techniques such as force-feeding and restraint chairs are abandoned," the letter said.

The doctors said the World Medical Association - a world body representing physicians, including those in the US - specifically prohibited force-feeding. They also recommended that those participating in the Guantanamo force-feedings be disciplined by their professional organizations.

by TChris

Apart from the legal and moral objections to detainee abuse, the need to maintain credibility should have deterred the administration from mistreating prisoners. China announced today that it isn't interested in lectures on human rights from a government that wiretaps its citizens and detains uncharged prisoners indefinitely.

The Chinese government's report, issued a day after the State Department slammed China for "numerous and serious" human rights abuses, attacked the United States for failing its citizens.

And China isn't alone.

Tomorrow, at 10:30 am ET, Sen. Russ Feingold will hold a live text chat.

Senator Russ Feingold brings a "text chat" version of his trademark listening sessions to the World Wide Web on March 10, at 10:30 AM Eastern. The live, online session will be open to anyone with access to the Internet and a desire to ask questions of Senator Feingold live, in an online computer text chat session.

Sen. Feingold is still unhappy about the passage of the Patriot Act renewal legislation. From his statement today (received by e-mail):

by TChris

Do immigration authorities have nothing better to do than this?

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is seeking to deport a 38-year-old Rochester Hills woman who fled Colombia 22 years ago. Returning to Colombia would endanger Rosa Rodriguez, a mortgage service representative, and her 6-year-old U.S.-born daughter. Government lawyers should drop these senseless proceedings.

The case against Rodriguez is flimsy. Immigration officials say she married under false pretenses 16 years ago to become a permanent U.S. resident. No agents testified about the accusations in immigration court. Conversely, the couple, along with nine witnesses called by Rodriguez's lawyer, William Dance, said the marriage was valid.

This is a woman who works, pays taxes, and raises her daughter (an American citizen by birth). Why is ICE wasting its limited resources on her?

The death penalty is back in force in Iraq.

The Iraqi authorities have hanged 13 people accused of taking part in the insurgency, the first execution of militants since the US-led invasion....The US-led coalition abolished the death penalty in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, but it was re-instated during the handover to Iraqi control in June 2004.

It was reinstated so they could kill Saddam, but they've found other uses for it.

The BBC's Andrew North in Baghdad says that, with more than 14,000 people currently in US coalition detention, it raises the possibility that there could be many more executions.

Background here and here.

Breaking: The Washington Post reports:

The United Arab Emirates company that was attempting to take over management operations at six U.S. ports announced today that it will divest itself of all American interests.

Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) announced on the Senate floor shortly before 2 p.m. that Dubai Ports World would "transfer fully the operations of U.S. ports to a U.S. entity." Warner, who had been trying to broker a compromise on the issue, said DP World would divest itself of U.S. interests "in an orderly fashion" so as not to suffer "economic loss."

[Hat tip to Democratic Daily.]

There's lots of movement today in the NSA warrantless electronic surveillance lawsuit department:

• The Justice Department has released an e-mail under the FOIA Act in which a former official describes the Government's legal defenses to the NSA spying program as "weak" and "slightly after-the-fact," and opines they reflected Cheney's "philosophy... [the]best defense is a good offense.":

The Justice Department official who oversaw national security matters from 2000 to 2003 e-mailed (pdf) his former colleagues after revelation of the controversial warrantless wiretapping program in December 2005 that the Department's justifications for the program were "weak" and had a "slightly after-the-fact quality" to them, and surmised that this reflected "the VP's philosophy that the best defense is a good offense," according to documents released through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and joined by the ACLU and the National Security Archive.

Via the Peacock Report:

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has chosen Hawaii as the venue for its annual International Narcotics Enforcement Management Seminar, a 20-day conference that in the past had been held in Washington, D.C. According to a call for bids released yesterday, the State Dept.-funded event will take place at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu as well as at an unspecified hotel in Waikiki.

....U.S. taxpayers will foot the bill for 12 hotel suites for unnamed VIPs from May 28 to June 16, when the event will conclude with a U.S. government-funded and catered "graduation dinner for approximately 40 people."

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales spoke in London on Tuesday. Here are his prepared remarks. Undoubtedly, every word was vetted and chosen with care. Here's what he had to say about the U.S. sending detainees to other countries that practice torture:

We do not transport anyone to a country if we believe it more likely than not that the individual will be tortured.

So "more likely than not" is the standard. This makes it clear that the U.S. is sending prisoners to countries that practice torture except when they believe a particular individual will be tortured. We should not be sending any prisoners to countries that practice torture, period.

by TChris

Given the president's belief that he can wiretap at will, it isn't surprising that the FBI has followed that lead. In the last two years, the FBI has increasingly exceeded its intelligence gathering authority.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation found apparent violations of its own wiretapping and other intelligence-gathering procedures more than 100 times in the last two years, and problems appear to have grown more frequent in some crucial respects, a Justice Department report released Wednesday said.

FBI agents have exceeded court-imposed limits on wiretaps, sometimes eavesdropping for months after warrants expire.