"We have come to expect from Hollywood films such as Enemy of the State and the Jason Bourne trilogy that shadowy organizations have instant access to all the databases we rely on and, with a few keystrokes, can spy on our every movement. The process of collecting information from multiple sources and merging it, known as data fusion, is supposed to create an information resource that is more powerful, more flexible and more accurate than any of the original sources. Proponents of data fusion say that their systems let organizations make better use of the data they already have; critics say that fusion threatens civil liberties by using information in ways that were never envisioned when it was first collected. Both sides assume that data-fusion systems actually work. The reality is that the systems are nowhere nearly as omniscient, as reliable or as well developed as many people think."
The article then goes into the opportunities and ethical challenges around the most common application of such fusion - profiling,
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