The President's annual budget reports on federal funding dedicated to combating terrorism activities. Identification of such funding is inherently difficult because a significant portion of combating terrorism funding is embedded within appropriation accounts that include funding for other activities as well. In 2002, GAO reported on the difficulties that the executive branch faced in reporting funding for combating terrorism to Congress (see GAO-03-170). This report updates the information contained in the 2002 report by providing information on (1) the methods agencies use to determine the portion of their annual appropriations related to combating terrorism, and (2) the status of recommendations from GAO's 2002 report.

High-Containment Laboratories: National Strategy for Oversight Is Needed

All U.S. agencies with counterterrorism programs that collect or "mine" personal data-such as phone records or Web sites visited-should be required to evaluate the programs' effectiveness, lawfulness, and impacts on privacy. A framework is offered that agencies can use to evaluate such information-based programs, both classified and unclassified. The book urges Congress to re-examine existing privacy law to assess how privacy can be protected in current and future programs and recommends that any individuals harmed by violations of privacy be given a meaningful form of redress. Two specific technologies are examined: data mining and behavioral surveillance. Regarding data mining, the book concludes that although these methods have been useful in the private sector for spotting consumer fraud, they are less helpful for counterterrorism because so little is known about what patterns indicate terrorist activity. Regarding behavioral surveillance in a counterterrorist context, the book concludes that although research and development on certain aspects of this topic are warranted, there is no scientific consensus on whether these techniques are ready for operational use at all in counterterrorism.

`Alexander Spencer successfully establishes constructivist terrorism research as nothing less than an alternative to traditional and critical terrorism studies.'---Professor Christopher Daase, Chair for international Organisations, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany --