2005: NSA Proposes New Data Mining Program

The National Security Agency calls for proposals in regard to a new electronic surveillance program, the Advanced Capabilities for Intelligence Analysis (ACIA). Like its cousin, the Novel Intelligence from Massive Data (NIMD) project (see After September 11, 2001), ACIA will use a huge electronic database of information on US citizens and foreign nationals to track potential terrorists and terror plots. Like NIMD, ACIA will look for ways “to construct and use plausible futures in order to provide additional, novel interpretations for today’s collection” of intelligence information, according to the call for proposals. [National Journal, 1/20/2006]