Via GovExec.Com: Here comes TID (Terrorist Information Database)

The FBI is building a massive database to store case information, leads, intelligence and even newspaper and magazine articles related to terrorism.

Articles, the names of suspected terrorists on watch lists and terrorism-related message traffic from the Defense Department and the CIA have been placed into the database, which is being tested by some agents, according to Wilson Lowery, the FBI executive assistant director leading the project. Visa information from the State Department will be added to the database within 60 days, he said.

The database also would store information from state and local law enforcement agencies, records of telephone calls and terrorism-related information from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Defense agencies. It would also contain data from the 66 joint terrorism task forces at FBI field offices, as well as from the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, an interagency group formed by Attorney General John Ashcroft in October 2001 to keep known terrorists and suspects out of the United States and to track them if they do enter the country.

Reporters have already been briefed on the new system. Lowery acknowledged that security is an issue, and said one safeguard will be that "information would be collected according to guidelines established by the attorney general." That's supposed to make us less concerned about the civil liberties and privacy issues involved? If anything, it makes us worry more.

Update: Patriot Watch explains the danger in these databases.