Posted on 11/09/2002 9:31:25 AM PST by rs79bm
By JOHN MARKOFF
he Pentagon is constructing a computer system that could create a vast electronic dragnet, searching for personal information as part of the hunt for terrorists around the globe — including the United States.
As the director of the effort, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, has described the system in Pentagon documents and in speeches, it will provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access to information from Internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents, without a search warrant.
Historically, military and intelligence agencies have not been permitted to spy on Americans without extraordinary legal authorization. But Admiral Poindexter, the former national security adviser in the Reagan administration, has argued that the government needs broad new powers to process, store and mine billions of minute details of electronic life in the United States.
Admiral Poindexter, who has described the plan in public documents and speeches but declined to be interviewed, has said that the government needs to "break down the stovepipes" that separate commercial and government databases, allowing teams of intelligence agency analysts to hunt for hidden patterns of activity with powerful computers.
"We must become much more efficient and more clever in the ways we find new sources of data, mine information from the new and old, generate information, make it available for analysis, convert it to knowledge, and create actionable options," he said in a speech in California earlier this year.
Admiral Poindexter quietly returned to the government in January to take charge of the Office of Information Awareness at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as Darpa. The office is responsible for developing new surveillance technologies in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
In order to deploy such a system, known as Total Information Awareness, new legislation would be needed, some of which has been proposed by the Bush administration in the Homeland Security Act that is now before Congress. That legislation would amend the Privacy Act of 1974, which was intended to limit what government agencies could do with private information.
The possibility that the system might be deployed domestically to let intelligence officials look into commercial transactions worries civil liberties proponents.
"This could be the perfect storm for civil liberties in America," said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington "The vehicle is the Homeland Security Act, the technology is Darpa and the agency is the F.B.I. The outcome is a system of national surveillance of the American public."
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has been briefed on the project by Admiral Poindexter and the two had a lunch to discuss it, according to a Pentagon spokesman.
"As part of our development process, we hope to coordinate with a variety of organizations, to include the law enforcement community," a Pentagon spokeswoman said.
An F.B.I. official, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified, said the bureau had had preliminary discussions with the Pentagon about the project but that no final decision had been made about what information the F.B.I. might add to the system.
A spokesman for the White House Office of Homeland Security, Gordon Johndroe, said officials in the office were not familiar with the computer project and he declined to discuss concerns raised by the project's critics without knowing more about it.
He referred all questions to the Defense Department, where officials said they could not address civil liberties concerns because they too were not familiar enough with the project.
Some members of a panel of computer scientists and policy experts who were asked by the Pentagon to review the privacy implications this summer said terrorists might find ways to avoid detection and that the system might be easily abused.
"A lot of my colleagues are uncomfortable about this and worry about the potential uses that this technology might be put, if not by this administration then by a future one," said Barbara Simon, a computer scientist who is past president of the Association of Computing Machinery. "Once you've got it in place you can't control it."
Other technology policy experts dispute that assessment and support Admiral Poindexter's position that linking of databases is necessary to track potential enemies operating inside the United States.
"They're conceptualizing the problem in the way we've suggested it needs to be understood," said Philip Zelikow, a historian who is executive director of the Markle Foundation task force on National Security in the Information Age. "They have a pretty good vision of the need to make the tradeoffs in favor of more sharing and openness."
On Wednesday morning, the panel reported its findings to Dr. Tony Tether, the director of the defense research agency, urging development of technologies to protect privacy as well as surveillance, according to several people who attended the meeting.
If deployed, civil libertarians argue, the computer system would rapidly bring a surveillance state. They assert that potential terrorists would soon learn how to avoid detection in any case.
The new system will rely on a set of computer-based pattern recognition techniques known as "data mining," a set of statistical techniques used by scientists as well as by marketers searching for potential customers.
The system would permit a team of intelligence analysts to gather and view information from databases, pursue links between individuals and groups, respond to automatic alerts, and share information efficiently, all from their individual computers.
The project calls for the development of a prototype based on test data that would be deployed at the Army Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir, Va. Officials would not say when the system would be put into operation.
The system is one of a number of projects now under way inside the government to lash together both commercial and government data to hunt for patterns of terrorist activities.
"What we are doing is developing technologies and a prototype system to revolutionize the ability of the United States to detect, classify and identify foreign terrorists, and decipher their plans, and thereby enable the U.S. to take timely action to successfully pre-empt and defeat terrorist acts," said Jan Walker, the spokeswoman for the defense research agency.
Before taking the position at the Pentagon, Admiral Poindexter, who was convicted in 1990 for his role in the Iran-contra affair, had worked as a contractor on one of the projects he now controls. Admiral Poindexter's conviction was reversed in 1991 by a federal appeals court because he had been granted immunity for his testimony before Congress about the case.
It's simply amazing that there are those who'd sacrifice Freedom for the temporary perception of "safety". Those who'd sacrifice Freedom deserve neither Freedom nor safety.
That's been the plan all along. Add the "domestic violence" issue, where a woman with a hair up her butt can walk into any courthouse in America in order to get a "restraining order" which requires the defendent to turn in ALL firearms under the threat of being convicted as a felon, things are becoming QUITE clear to those of us that still have eyes and ears as well as a mind that isn't numb.
This isn't just packet sniffing. This is database triangulation -- all of that "private" marketing data, credit data, banking, etc., all coming together in a database that gets analyzed by algorithm for patterns of behavior.
Marketers pay billions for the data on us, just to learn how to control our buying behavior... and it always works. Spending 10 million on an ad campaign that has nothing to do with your product will increase your sales more than lowering your prices.
This will not only be a privacy invader, it will be an analysis tool for designing and implementing propoganda.
Probably some Indian sweat shop or a bunch of H1-B visa workers here in the US.
If this is any example of what he wants, we're ALL in for some seriously dangerous times ahead...
Yeah, maybe they'll give them a scholarship to attend a university in order to earn a Bachelors in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering. Thing is though, they'd have to learn how to get along with Muslims at work, as there are MANY of them here on H1-B.
I'm late to the thread, but count me among those who do give this type of intrusion very serious thought. I think the recent elections giving Republicans complete control of the government will be seen to be one more step towards a dictatorship.
When either side has such an advantage, it becomes easy for them to foist something like this onto Americans. Sadly, there are too many people out there like rs79bm who believe such a system will not be used against them eventually.
Whether a D or an R is in office, the slide towrds complete tyranny remains steady.
That is a sad fact. D=R.
Think about these facts.
The democrats are for abortion and the "gay" life style. Ok, that'll go far in convincing Americans to vote for them.
The republicans are for layoffs of US workers so that they can be replaced by foreign nationals pretty much hostile to the US. That and they're for pollution of the environment and welfare for the rich.
BOTH of them are for REALLY big government and the redaction and eventual elimination of the US Constitution.
Gee, whom should we vote for?
Oh damn, let's call it for what it is. The democrats are all for the wholesale slaughter and murder of the most innocent amongst us, little babies that are trapped in their mother's womb. There, now that was more accurate.
H1-B are more dependable and they are not infected with quaint obsolete constitutional ideas.
So what is the composite outline of this bipartisan project?
Forced integration across the open borders, free abortion, homosexual training in the schools and workplace, Dickensian free market competition for the poor - welfare for the big business, military/police/prisons the main items in the budget, "free" speech constrained to the remote areas (maybe next to the casino in the Indian reservation?), final separation/exclusion of religion from public sphere, drugging of students and workers (Ritalin etc ...), global empire etc, etc ... Did I miss something?
25 Rules of Disinformation -- "5. Sidetrack opponents with name calling and ridicule. This is also known as the primary attack the messenger ploy, though other methods qualify as variants of that approach. Associate opponents with unpopular titles such as "kooks", "right-wing", "liberal", "left-wing", "terrorists", "conspiracy buffs", "radicals", "militia", "racists", "religious fanatics", "sexual deviates", and so forth. This makes others shrink from support out of fear of gaining the same label, and you avoid dealing with issues."
You refuse to deal with what I've said -- #5 is what you do -- I keep it bookmarked for posts like yours.
The NY Times' references to what Poindexter said are poor. You don't even argue that. So we are left with the DARPA TIA slide, any dangerous specifics of which the NYTimes or you have not articulated.
From my FR homepage -- "What bothers me most, is the lack of critical thought I see throughout the country and sometimes even here at FreeRepublic."
If you don't like that I question your presentation of what you posted, then go some place else where people can read your posts and kiss your feet.
The governments imposition on our privacy is an important issue -- in fact pretty damn important. I don't completely trust our standing administration and I don't trust the enemies of the current standing administration even more.
Your presentation as stated does not lead me to conclude that the current administration is plotting to F* with our privacy.
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