crumley's Journal: FBI Data Mining Students' Financial Aid Records

The U.S. Department of Education has been running program of data mining students' financial aid records for the FBI for five years. The program known as Project Strike Back involved trolling for names of suspected terrorists through the Education Department's database of information derived from student's who fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). The discovery of this program by Northwestern University journalism student Laura McGann has added fuel to the debate about the Education Department's proposal to start a new database tracking the academic progress of all students.

It is on the front page

[crumley]

Hey. This story made the front page - I guess that I don't need this journal article. Though Zonk did switch out the main link.

Congrats on the article posting...

[TopShelf]

Except for the parts about data mining and trolling, which are misleading and incorrect statements. But hey, it's not like /. editors actually validate anything!

Re:

[crumley]

After reading the NY Times article, I agree that it isn't really data mining. The Chronicle article (link in my journal) that I originally submitted called it data mining several times, including in its headline. I stand by using the word troll though. From the description in the articles, the FBI gave the Department of Education lists of names, and the Education Department looked for those names in the database. Its not clear that they have any other info than the names. So just like the do not fly lis

Re:

[TopShelf]

Of course if I spent more time on them I suppose that my success rate might go up ;).

I dunno, sloppy editing is kind of a hallmark around here!