Yesterday Ryan Singel of Wired’s Threat Level blog posted a remarkable story about a Department of Homeland Security study which said that data mining for terrorists was not only unfeasible, but leads to un-American outcomes.

“Automated identification of terrorists through data mining (or any other known methodology) is neither feasible as an objective nor desirable as a goal of technology development efforts,” the report found. “Even in well-managed programs, such tools are likely to return significant rates of false positives, especially if the tools are highly automated.”

The 376-page report — entitled “Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists” — comes as a rebuke to the Bush administration’s attempts to use high-tech surveillance and data-sifting tools to prevent another terrorist attack inside the United States.

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In particular, the report continually stresses need for the government to follow the law — a none-too-subtle reference to the government’s secret warrantless wiretapping of Americans’ communications.

The committee was comprised of a number of technical and policy experts from government contractors, tech firms and academia. The group’s official name was the Committee on Technical and Privacy Dimensions of Information for Terrorism Prevention and Other National Goals.

The committee reiterated that the government should have useful tools to fight terrorism, but that they must be useful and respect Americans’ privacy.

Now would be a great time for Senate Homeland Security Committee Chair Joe Lieberman to call hearings and investigate whether any currently classified programs are relying on data mining techniques that this DHS commission says are neither effective nor produce results in line with American principles. Of course that’s not going to happen. Even as the Department of Homeland Security itself says data mining doesn’t work and only leads to violations of Americans’ rights, we cannot expect Lieberman and his Republican cohort to demand oversight.

Were Lieberman stripped of his Committee chairmanship, I believe Tom Carper of Delaware would be next in line to be Chair (Levin and Akaka both already chair committees). Would Senator Carper hold hearings on the federal government’s use of data mining? I don’t know. But the next Congress and the next administration owe it to the American people to start turning back the clock on the Bush administration’s abuses of surveillance powers.

The Bush administration and Republicans in Congress (with frequent assists from Democrats) have thrown a lot of dubious, illegal, and ineffective techniques at the problem of stopping terrorism since 2001. Data mining is one of the most odious and it’s way past time that the powers that be stop, look around, and realize that throwing everything but the kitchen sink at a problem doesn’t work. Massive invasions of American privacy and violations of American law don’t make us safer – they reduce who we are as a country, which is exactly what our enemies have sought to do for years. Fortunately some people at DHS have identified a problem area. It’s up to Congress and the next administration to rectify it.