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Recently declassified documents obtained by Wired magazine reveal a massive Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) data mining operation. It already possesses over 1.5 billion records from government and private-sector sources. That figure is expected by the FBI to balloon to over 6 billion within a few years. And it is not just terrorists they are after.  According to the documents, the National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC) is being used to pursue multiple types of non-terrorism domestic investigations. It is also meant to be able to sort through the data — everything from health and travel records to credit card...

Progressive Insurance Companies in Texas is launching a unique program in Texas which may save you money on your car insurance, but has civil libertarians worried, 1200 WOAI news reports. Progressive is offering discounts starting today to motorists who are willing to have a device placed into their cars which will notify the company about the customer’s driving habits. "It doesn't tell where you're driving, it just tells them a little about your driving habits," insurance industry spokesman Jerry Johns told 1200 WOAI news. Johns says the system is in place in other states, but the Progressive attempt is the...

Innocent-seeming questionnaires, tests, and surveys are increasingly being disseminated by government officials so that they have complete histories on every citizen. At this writing, Republican Congresswoman Virginia Foxx of North Carolina is busy apologizing for her politically incorrect gaffe in arguing against legislation that would expand federal hate-crime laws to include sexual orientation. She pointed to the infamous Matthew Shepard case as a “hoax” inasmuch as Shepard’s killers appeared to have been interested in drugs, not sexual-identity issues. Were Foxx a teenager today, she would be spared the necessity of balancing her conservative views on sexuality against the left’s Orwellian...

HARRISON BROWN, an 18-year-old freshman majoring in mathematics at M.I.T., didn’t need to do complex calculations to figure out he liked this deal: in exchange for letting researchers track his every move, he receives a free smartphone. Now, when he dials another student, researchers know. When he sends an e-mail or text message, they also know. When he listens to music, they know the song. Every moment he has his Windows Mobile smartphone with him, they know where he is, and who’s nearby. Mr. Brown and about 100 other students living in Random Hall at M.I.T. have agreed to swap...

MADISON, Wis. - A landlord snooped on tenants to find out information about their finances. A woman repeatedly accessed her ex-boyfriend's account after a difficult breakup. Another obtained her child's father's address so she could serve him court papers. All worked for Wisconsin's largest utility, where employees routinely accessed confidential information about acquaintances, local celebrities and others from its massive customer database. Documents obtained by The Associated Press in an employment case involving Milwaukee-based WE Energies shine a light on a common practice in the utilities, telecommunications and accounting industries, privacy experts say. Vast computer databases give curious employees the...

You'd think that in a slowing economy, companies would be trying to hold on to every potential customer. Not DirecTV. The satellite operator is weeding out customers, and it has no problem with fewer people signing up. In a conference call with analysts this week, CEO Chase Carey said the company has a new focus on "quality subscribers" (read: ones with money). It finds these subscribers by analyzing their income, age, home ownership, education and other metrics, Carey said in an earnings call with analysts. (Transcript here). DirecTV puts those customers into different categories to figure out who's valuable and...

Granted, the numbers are way bigger But, what sticks out are the ~400 busiest posters.. Let's have a look at the Top 15: kathyinalaska : 30,156 (83 p.d.) luvw : 25,212 (69 p.d.) nwarizonagranny : 25,126 (69 p.d.) pissant : 23,461 (64 p.d.) mylife : 23,038 (63 p.d.) chicagoconservative2: 20,998 (57 p.d.) cindy : 17,721 (49 p.d.) salvation : 17,653 (48 p.d) sunkenciv : 17,519 (48 p.d.) sandrat : 17,374 (47 p.d.) fuddfan : 17,147 (47 p.d.) clintnsuhks :17,118 (45 p.d.) stephenjohnbanker: 16,233 (44 p.d.) calpernia : 16,073 (44 p.d.) eternalvigilance : 15,319 (42 p.d.) That takes some persistence!

The US and UK governments are developing increasingly sophisticated gadgets to keep individuals under their surveillance. When it comes to technology, the US is determined to stay ahead of the game.... Their goal is to invent a system whereby a facial image can be matched to your gait, your height, your weight and other elements, so a computer will be able to identify instantly who you are. How you walk could be used to identify you in a crowd. "As you walk through a crowd, we'll be able to track you," said Professor Challapa. "These are all things that don't...

From late 2004 until mid-2006, a little-known data-mining computer system developed by the US Department of Homeland Security to hunt terrorists, weapons of mass destruction, and biological weapons sifted through Americans' personal data with little regard for federal privacy laws. Now the $42 million cutting-edge system, designed to process trillions of pieces of data, has been halted and could be canceled pending data-privacy reviews, according to a newly released report to Congress by the DHS's own internal watchdog

WASHINGTON - The FBI is gathering and sorting information about Americans to help search for potential terrorists, insurance cheats and crooked pharmacists, according to a government report obtained Tuesday. Records about identity thefts, real estate transactions, motor vehicle accidents and complaints about Internet drug companies are being searched for common threads to aid law enforcement officials, the Justice Department said in a report to Congress on the agency's data-mining practices. In addition, the report disclosed government plans to build a new database to assess the risk posed by people identified as potential or suspected terrorists. The chairman of the Senate...

In late 2002, Alex Gage sold his share of a well-established polling firm and set about convincing Karl Rove that he had the answer to ensuring President Bush's reelection. His pitch was simple: Take corporate America's love affair with learning everything it can about its customers, and its obsession with carving up the country into smaller and smaller clusters of like-minded consumers, and turn those trends into a political strategy. The Bush majority would be made up of thousands of groups of like-minded voters whom the campaign could reach with precisely the right message on the issues they considered most...

LOS ANGELES - Officials will look into how electronic data mining might help Los Angeles County root out and prevent fraud in public assistance programs. The Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to study the possibility of use of data-mining technology and of training public assistance staff members in fraud prevention techniques. " 'Data mining' is a $10 term for collaboration between agencies and information sharing," said Tony Bell, aide to 5th District Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich. Using data mining, the county would be able to check if applicants for county-administered aid programs are also getting assistance from other programs or...

Having Won a Pulitzer for Exposing Data Mining, Times Now Eager to Do Its Own Data Mining by Keach Hagey May 1st, 2007 Barely a year after their reporters won a Pulitzer prize for exposing data mining of ordinary citizens by a government spy agency, New York Times officials had some exciting news for stockholders last week: The Times company plans to do its own data mining of ordinary citizens, in the name of online profits. The news didn't make everyone all googly-eyed. In fact, some people at the paper's annual stockholders meeting in the New Amsterdam Theatre exchanged confused...

TESTIMONY Subcommittee on Homeland Security (Senate Appropriations Committee) Publication Date: September 14, 2006 Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to testify before the Subcommittee on Homeland Security regarding American and British laws for investigating and detaining suspected terrorists. I am a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley. From 2001 to 2003, I served as deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, where I worked on issues involving national security, foreign relations, and terrorism. My academic writing on these subjects can be found in two books, one published last...

NATIONAL SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY New Hires Data Has Potential for Updating Addresses of Convicted Sex Offenders ... To help track the location of sex offenders, law enforcement officials have turned to other sources of information, such as state departments of motor vehicles and commercial databases. Previous GAO work suggests that the National Directory of New Hires (NDNH) has been useful for the purposes of verifying eligibility for federal benefit programs and collecting debt owed to the federal government, and is a timely source of information.4 The NDNH is a database maintained by the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) within...

Don Fullman finished off a cinnamon roll and iced tea at the St. Louis Bread Co. in Winchester on Friday morning and talked about some of the things he's looked up recently on the Internet. Bile duct cancer, aneurysms, substance abuse. "If you took that out of context . . . it would look like I'm a wreck and I'm not going to live much longer," said Fullman, a self-described healthy 60-year-old from Ballwin, whose laptop computer sat open on the table. "If that's winding up under my name personally, that's a little scary." Many people might not realize that...

Have we been hoodwinked by another false story by the drive-by media? With both BellSouth and Verizon saying they know nothing and have never been contacted by the NSA or handed over any phone records, it looks increasingly possible these reliable anonymous sources that USA Today relied on either didn't know the facts or were intentionally misleading the reporters. Is this the next RatherGate? It appears another drive-by media attempt to discredit the President and advance the claim that Republicans are trying to usher in a new era of fascism has fallen flat on its face. Claims by USA Today...

http://www.news.com/ NSA's data mining explained By Declan McCullagh http://marketwatch-cnet.com.com, marketwatch-cnet.com.com/NSAs+data+mining+explained/2100-1028_3-6071780.html Story last modified Sun May 14 16:36:34 PDT 2006 Capitol Hill politicians reacted angrily this week to a new report about how the National Security agency is involved in not merely surveillance of phone calls, but also an extensive data mining program. "We need to know what our government is doing in its activities that spy upon Americans," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat. Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania vowed to hold hearings to get to the bottom of how the NSA's data mining works and whether Americans'...

Does anyone imagine the NSA is interested in what the average American said to his grandmother on the telephone last night? In fact, the NSA is not eavesdropping at all on the average American's conversations. It is collecting records of which phone numbers placed calls to which other numbers and when. No names, addresses or details of conversations are included. The NSA says this anonymous "data mining" allows the agency to study patterns of calling, the better to identify who may be involved with terrorist groups. If Number A places a lot of calls to Number B who likewise calls...

Latest News --EPIC Urges Scrutiny of Proposed Federal Profiling Agency. In a letter (pdf) to a House subcommittee, EPIC urged careful scrutiny of the Department of Homeland Security's proposed Office of Screening Coordination and Operations. This office would oversee vast databases of digital fingerprints and photographs, eye scans and personal information from millions of American citizens and lawful foreign visitors. Homeland Security has announced that the office's operations would be conducted in a manner that safeguards civil liberties, but the agency has not yet explained how it proposes to protect privacy rights or ensure accountability. For more information, visit EPIC's...

May 12, 2006 — Americans by nearly a 2-1 ratio call the surveillance of telephone records an acceptable way for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats, expressing broad unconcern even if their own calling patterns are scrutinized. Lending support to the administration's defense of its anti-terrorism intelligence efforts, 63 percent in this ABC News/Washington Post poll say the secret program, disclosed Thursday by USA Today, is justified, while far fewer, 35 percent, call it unjustified. Indeed, 51 percent approve of the way President Bush is handling the protection of privacy rights, while 47 percent disapprove — hardly a...

Earlier this year, Congress launched an investigation into the sale of cell phone records after the FBI and Chicago Police warned that Web-based firms could sell their officers' calling lists to criminals. Now some of the companies under investigation for fraud are telling Congress they have provided personal information to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. On Monday, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., blasted the FBI after learning that Advanced Research Inc. sent Congress a letter saying the firm did work for the bureau. Attorney General Lisa Madigan has sued Advanced Research for allegedly using fraud to obtain Illinois consumers'...

...But this case management and data mining software, developed in the early 1980s by a small Washington D.C. company, Inslaw Inc., had proven itself to be a perfect intelligence tool... Stolen by ruse from its owner, Inslaw Inc., the software was hacked and provided with a "trap door", ... a Trojan Horse hacker’s trick, that enabled the retrieval of information from the foreign intelligence services and banks it had been sold to on behalf of Israeli and U.S. intelligence. Without the knowledge of the software’s owner, and in violation of copyright laws, the PROMIS software was sold to over 40...

HILLARY GURU PLANS DATABASE TO RIVAL DNC; SOROS FINANCED Tue Mar 07 2006 20:38:16 ET A group of well-connected Democrats led by a former top aide to Bill and Hillary Clinton is raising millions of dollars to start a private firm -- that plans to compile huge amounts of data on Americans to identify Democratic voters. The effort by Harold Ickes, a deputy chief of staff in the Clinton White House and an adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., is prompting intense behind-the-scenes debate in Democratic circles, the WASHINGTON POST is planning to report on Wednesday. Officials at the...

The principals in the Able Danger story have filed suit to restrain the Department of Defense from retaliating against Tony Shaffer and to allow these witnesses to retain counsel during the closed hearings that Congress has scheduled into the data-mining program. Mark Zaid, representing Shaffer as well as contractor J. D. Smith, filed the suit on Monday against the DoD, DIA, the Army, and their attorneys in the DC district court. I've copied the text into the extended entry of this post. Most of those who have followed Able Danger will not be surprised by the allegations in the lawsuit....

I've created an Able Danger Podcast blog to generate a podcast feed so folks can subscribe to this feed and easily obtain any Able Danger audio (mp3) files. Here is the podcast feed for the Able Danger podcasts. The link to this feed is easy to find at the top left corner of my main blog, QT Monster, just above the Able Danger blog roll. Folks can subscribe to this podcast feed through iTunes. From the iTunes interface pull down the Advanced menu, click on subscribe to podcast, and in the dialogue box paste the URL for this podcast feed:...

Sources close to the ongoing Department of Defense investigation into the controversial Able Danger data mining intelligence program, which purportedly identified Mohammed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers a year before the worst terror attacks in US history, say the mystery person who actually obtained a much-disputed photograph of Atta for the Able Danger team has now been identified. Ever since the Pentagon-ordered destruction in 2000 of 2.5 terabytes of data unearthed by Able Danger – allegedly including a chart featuring Atta’s photograph that revealed terrorist links and patterns when clicked on – skeptics have long raised doubt about the...

The first 20 minutes or so of the Able Danger conference call was previously posted here. The next three audio clips are here, here and here. Attending this conference call with Congressman Weldon were: AJ Strata from The Strata-Sphere, Dana from Common Sense Political Thought, Curt from Flopping Aces, Mike of Able Danger Blog, QT Monster, Rory O’Connor, Pierre from Pink Flamingo Bar & Grill, Bluto from Jawa Report and The Dread Pundit Bluto.

Some traditional intelligence officials, however, seemed either skeptical or jealous of LIWA's capability. At one conference, "Able Danger" analysts identified four major al-Qaida hubs - the Middle East, East Africa, Balkans and the Far East - in about 90 minutes."Because we weren't an intelligence organization, we got a lot of bad press," he said. "Folks thought we were running fast and loose with the data."By April, the "Able Danger" team was told to end its support of SOCOM. During the month's long work stoppage, SOCOM's patience ran out, and the military command transferred the work to a Raytheon facility in...

Able Danger identified Mohammad Atta and at least 2 other 9-11 hijackers more than a year before the 9-11 attacks. Why was the data that connected Mohammad Atta as a possible terrorist threat to the United States destroyed, and why wasn't this information shared with the FBI so the 9-11 attacks might have been prevented? 1. Dr. Stephen A. Cambone, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, explains that there wasn't any prohibition against sharing Able Danger information with the FBI. One of Dr. Cambone's colleagues says, "...we share in Army intelligence and DoD intelligence, we share information with the FBI...

China Study Rocks The Hill and Unleashes The Purge: While Cambone tried to link the data purge to this 90-day rule, Weldon and the other witnesses (with first hand knowledge) pointed to the LIWA China Study that was being done in parallel to the Able Danger study. I have stated all along this was the lynchpin, the source of all later cover ups and mistakes and lost opportunities. We all know the story so I will not repeat it here, but what we learned from the hearings is how far up this went. Weldon let slip that the initial China...

No you're right Tony, and the significance here is that the FBI Director back then, Louis Freeh said in October of last year on national television, that if he had had the Able Danger information the FBI might well have been able to stop the hijacking. In our hearing past week, and we had both classified and unclassified, we had five people that testified under oath that they believed the same thing. That if the data they collected, that if the analysis they did had been able to be passed to the FBI, they agree with Louis Freeh, that would...

MediaChannel.org used the powerful new MediaVision tool to monitor television news coverage of the Able Danger Congressional hearings. To our astonishment CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" was the only news show to give Able Danger any significant coverage. We were so shocked by the lack of coverage that we created an online campaign to try to pressure TV news networks to cover, as Lou Dobbs put it, "what could be the biggest scandal of our lifetime." Click here to send networks an email demanding coverage! So, sadly, here it is. All the TV coverage we could find thus far:

25th Item: Holy Cow! Weldon has a signed affidavit from a witness that talked to one of Cambone’s staff recently and who said Cambone’s group was going to ‘kill this story’ and Shaffer had no credibility. The name is Butch Willard This is right after Cambone claimed no one was not trying to ‘bring the information forward’. If Weldon is right, Cambone just perjured himself and is in hot water now. The witness is an ex intelligence officer (woman). They moved all this to the closed session!

Audio of the today's entire Able Danger hearing is posted here.

Rep. Curt Weldon: I've learned some additional things that are new. You saw the Arlen Specter hearing in Judiciary that occurred in September. It's very troubling to me that it appears as though the DOD witness did not tell the truth. We had testimony that all of the Able Danger data-mining material was destroyed. I now know that that's not the case. In fact, I now know there's data still available. And I am in contact with people who are still able to data mining runs on pre-9/11 data. In those data runs that are now being done today, in...

The Able Danger portions of the House whistleblower hearings is posted here.

I am now liveblogging the US House Subcommittee hearing on national security whistle blowers. Lt. Col. Shaffer just finished his opening statement. He will be questioned during this hearing. You can listen now on C-Span Radio. The permalink to this post is here.

WASHINGTON — An active-duty military intelligence analyst has told congressional investigators that 9/11 pilot Mohamed Atta surfaced 13 times in a controversial Pentagon computer program before he executed the attacks, The Post has learned. Congressional sources said last night that an officer in the Pentagon's secretive Land Information Warfare Center told the staff of Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) about the computer hits.

It's looking like the Able Danger story (which the 9-11 Ommission Commission totally disregarded) may be about to take off. I'm told that this Wednesday's House Armed Service joint subcommittee hearing on Able Danger will have some surprises.

Everything you always wanted to know (but were afraid to ask, or the answers were classified…) about the controversial Able Danger data mining project, which identified four 9/11 hijackers a year before the terror attacks. 1. Did Anthony Shaffer, or anyone on the Able Danger team, obtain a photo of Mohamed Atta from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), as Shaffer’s interview with Government Security News (GSN) states? The photo of Atta came from an information broker who provided it and others. Shaffer’s comments were made to GSN based on his knowledge at the time, which came from his knowledge...

Tired of seeing the New York Times getting all the headlines with their treason, the Washington Post has decided to join in the fun of betraying its country's most vital national secrets.This self-styled military expert, William Arkin, must surely be aware it is a gross and illegal violation of national security to release code names. (Ask Kissinger about "Umbra.") Of course that didn't stop him from writing a book that does just that a year ago, either.In fact, Mr. Arkin considers himself more of an activist than a journalist. (Not that there is any discernible difference in our one party...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI destroyed evidence gathered in an investigation involving Osama bin Laden's network after its e-mail wiretap system mistakenly captured information to which the agency was not entitled. The FBI software not only picked up the e-mails of its target "but also picked up e-mails on non-covered targets," said a March 2000 memo to agency headquarters in Washington. "The FBI technical person was apparently so upset that he destroyed all the e-mail take, including the take on" the suspect, the memo said. The documents were made public through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the...

WHAT DID the 9/11 Commission know and when did they know it? That's what I want somebody with subpoena power to ask about Operation Able Danger. Or, as ex-FBI Director Louis Freeh said to me this week, "Why is the 9/11 Commission talking about hurricanes and tunnels and all these other things when it looks like they may have missed the single most important fact with respect to Sept. 11?" Freeh was answering my request for a response to comments made by Lee Hamilton and Tom Kean on "Meet the Press" last weekend. Operation Able Danger was an intelligence data-mining...

A petition has been posted here to demonstrate support for a congressional investigation into Able Danger. If you support seeing an investigation please sign the petition. And then you can spread the word here: http://www.petitiononline.com/cgi-bin/mailpage.cgi?weldon/petition.html

Roger Hedgecock was the substitute host on Rush's show yesterday. Close to the end of the second hour Roger had a few words to say about Able Danger. The audio file is up at QT Monster's Place.

That used to be the primary question of Able Danger, but now that we have seen what the DIA has done to the primary whistleblower, the questions have to run deeper than the incompetence of the Omission Commission. The Defense Intelligence Agency stripped Lt. Colonel Tony Shaffer of his clearances over a series of old and bogus charges relating to the use of pens and pads of paper from more than twenty years ago. That effectively ended his career in civilian intelligence work, although it doesn't affect his status in the Army Reserve. The DIA's attack on Shaffer on transparently...

This dismissive and apparently unsupported conclusion would have us believe that a key piece of evidence was summarily rejected in less than 10 days without serious investigation. The commission, at the very least, should have interviewed the 80 members of Able Danger, as the Pentagon did, five of whom say they saw "the chart." But this would have required admitting that the late-breaking news was inconveniently raised. So it was grossly neglected and branded as insignificant. Such a half-baked conclusion, drawn in only 10 days without any real investigation, simply ignores what looks like substantial direct evidence to the contrary...

A completely unexpected interview tonight on the JerryDoyle Show. Jerry Doyle questioned Mr. David Hawkins about Able Danger, the financing of Al Qaeda, John Deutsch, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Gen.Wesley Clark, the destruction of Lt. Col. Shaffer, the marginalizing of Rep. Curt Weldon and something called the French-American Foundation. Really strange stuff. The audio (mp3) is below.

Direct link to video: rtsp://video.c-span.org/15days/e110905_weldon.rm (14:59 into video; Requires Real Player) "But we have something new..... Dr. Bob Johnson is a professor and IT expert. Dr. Bob Johnson was the manager and operator of the Garland Unit of Data Mining separate from the Army's [leeway?]. Dr. Bob Johnson has not talked to any of the Able Danger players since the efforts that were taking place in '99 and 2000 and Dr. Bob Johnson told me that his unit also identified Mohammed Atta not by photo but by name before 9/11.." Other points: -Garland's Data was sent to SOCOM. -Able DAnger's...