Mega-thread on William Safires 'Invasion of Privacy' article.

[papercut]

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/09/politics/09COMP.html (link requires registration)

November 9, 2002

Pentagon Plans a Computer System That Would Peek at Personal Data of Americans

By JOHN MARKOFF

The 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.

[Tropical Z]

BAS*****!!!!!

[BrianW]

Plans? *snort* Whatsamatta, the NSA won't let 'em play with their toys?

Another trial balloon to see how the sheep react to the threat of a "benevolent" wolf in the fold.

[Waitone]

The article don't smell right to me. Something about it just smells bad.

--Why is the pentagon taking the lead with a computerized database? NSA is the den of DP wizards.
--There are entirely too many databases out there collect a blizzard of information unique to each database.
--Commercial and government databases are already linked. Its called the social security number.
--We already have far more capacity and capability to collect data than we have to interpret that data. Remember, we knew all kinds of stuff about 9-11, before and after the fact. We collect the data, we just didn't have the ability to interpret the data. Why is this any different.

This article is either an attempt by NYT to build its bonafides with civil libertarians or its a red herring thrown out by Big Government because it already exists.

[Torquemada]

Why not just be done with it and arrest and lock up everyone who isn't well-connected? After all, if it prevents just one crime (of any type) the cost is worth it.

Do it for the children.

[agricola]

is this similar to the Echelon system thats suspected of already being in existance?

[RickD]

This scares the beejeezus out of me.

Send this to your congresscritter and shake 'em up a bit.

Rick

-------------------

You Are a Suspect

By WILLIAM SAFIRE

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/14/opinion/14SAFI.html

WASHINGTON

If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is
what will happen to you:

Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine
subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web
site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade
your receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and
every event you attend - all these transactions and communications
will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual,
centralized grand database."

To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial
sources, add every piece of information that government has about you
‹ passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records,
judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the
F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera
surveillance ‹ and you have the supersnoop's dream: a "Total
Information Awareness" about every U.S. citizen.

This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario. It is what will happen
to your personal freedom in the next few weeks if John Poindexter
gets the unprecedented power he seeks.

Remember Poindexter? Brilliant man, first in his class at the Naval
Academy, later earned a doctorate in physics, rose to national
security adviser under President Ronald Reagan. He had this brilliant
idea of secretly selling missiles to Iran to pay ransom for hostages,
and with the illicit proceeds to illegally support contras in
Nicaragua.

A jury convicted Poindexter in 1990 on five felony counts of
misleading Congress and making false statements, but an appeals court
overturned the verdict because Congress had given him immunity for
his testimony. He famously asserted, "The buck stops here," arguing
that the White House staff, and not the president, was responsible
for fateful decisions that might prove embarrassing.

This ring-knocking master of deceit is back again with a plan even
more scandalous than Iran-contra. He heads the "Information Awareness
Office" in the otherwise excellent Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency, which spawned the Internet and stealth aircraft technology.
Poindexter is now realizing his 20-year dream: getting the "data-
mining" power to snoop on every public and private act of every
American.

Even the hastily passed U.S.A. Patriot Act, which widened the scope
of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and weakened 15 privacy
laws, raised requirements for the government to report secret
eavesdropping to Congress and the courts. But Poindexter's assault on
individual privacy rides roughshod over such oversight.

He is determined to break down the wall between commercial snooping
and secret government intrusion. The disgraced admiral dismisses such
necessary differentiation as bureaucratic "stovepiping." And he has
been given a $200 million budget to create computer dossiers on 300
million Americans.

When George W. Bush was running for president, he stood foursquare in
defense of each person's medical, financial and communications
privacy. But Poindexter, whose contempt for the restraints of
oversight drew the Reagan administration into its most serious
blunder, is still operating on the presumption that on such a
sweeping theft of privacy rights, the buck ends with him and not with
the president.

This time, however, he has been seizing power in the open. In the
past week John Markoff of The Times, followed by Robert O'Harrow of
The Washington Post, have revealed the extent of Poindexter's
operation, but editorialists have not grasped its undermining of the
Freedom of Information Act.

Political awareness can overcome "Total Information Awareness," the
combined force of commercial and government snooping. In a similar
overreach, Attorney General Ashcroft tried his Terrorism Information
and Prevention System (TIPS), but public outrage at the use of
gossips and postal workers as snoops caused the House to shoot it
down. The Senate should now do the same to this other exploitation
of fear.

The Latin motto over Poindexter"s new Pentagon office reads "Scientia
Est Potentia" - "knowledge is power." Exactly: the government's
infinite knowledge about you is its power over you. "We're just as
concerned as the next person with protecting privacy," this brilliant
mind blandly assured The Post. A jury found he spoke falsely before.

[wingman]

dup...

[ReefBlueCoupe]

conspiracy theory?

can you give us the name of the bill that needs to be amended so we can read and decide for ourselves?

[BigG]

The sky is falling!

While this sounds alarming in theory, I don't feel there is much to worry about. Speaking as a long term fedl gumit employee, the cluster they can make out of trying to implement even a TINY thing is almost beyond belief.

Besides, most pols have more skeletons than you all do and do you imagine for one minute that they are going to let Felix and Poindexter probe into their sordid pasts? Not bloody likely!

Sleep well!

[Ladybug]

Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend — all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."

That ALREADY happens to "suspects" but sadly, I don't think you qualify, though it looks like you might enjoy the attention... The Government (ominous capital G) does not have the capacity to track all that information on every American, they're working their behinds off just trying to keep track of the real suspects.

[Tamara]

Never a view for the future, eh?

"Don't worry, they only need it to look for terrorists!"

Once the law is on the books, and the infrastructure in place (...remember the 4th Amendment? Ah, those were the days....), what's to keep a future administration from deciding that JPFO members or GOA members are part of a terrorist organization?

[BigG]

What's an amendment?

[.]

You're right on target Tamara! Three years ago we were validating the combined technologies to support exactly such an "outwardly focused" effort. No-one in the "working group" believed, at that time, that we'd be so stupid as to point the system at ourselves!

[KSFreeman]

Any law that CAN be abused WILL be abused.

[Glock-A-Roo]

The factor of this story that is being overlooked by many on this site and others (see http://lucianne.com/threads2.asp?artnum=259896 ) is that access to this proposed database will not require a search warrant.

Not that I'm in favor of any such state surveillance, but requiring a warrant is a much higher standard to meet than some gov't man tapping on his PC to get the info immediately.

How long after TIASs' implementation will the system be hacked?

[Sodbuster]

certum est quia impossibile est

it is certain because it is impossible, p.79, "Amo, Amas, Amat"
I thought every TFLer had a copy of this book. And read it.

[Sam Adams]

I couldn't agree with you more.

To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin:

"Those who are willing to give up essential liberties in exchange for the promise of greater security deserve neither and will get neither."

It is an overused, though true statement that "knowledge is power." It is also said that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The knowledge that will be collected by this proposed system will be close to absolute regarding every aspect of every citizen's life. If people, TFLers or not, don't think that this system will be abused by the Fedgov (esp. one led by Hitlery or her ilk), or corrupt/powerhungry people working for the Fedgov, or some hacker out to make big bucks by blackmailing people, then they are incredibly naive.

The argument that "it can't be done" holds no water with me. Men couldn't fly, break the sound barrier, run a mile in less than 4 minutes, go to the Moon, etc. Need I go on? That which is a technological problem WILL be solved someday, given enough time and money - and we all know that the gov't has virtually unlimited money. It is only a matter of time before something like this WILL work. To argue that it is impossible is to miss the point completely, which is: SHOULD SUCH A SYSTEM EVEN BE PERMITTED UNDER OUR CONSTITUTION?

I cannot conceive of the reason why a government that was designed to be limited in nature, and whose reason for being is to serve We The People, needs to have a system in place that will collect and organize the details of every aspect of the lives of every person. None that is, except to ultimately subvert the reason for this nation's being by controlling everyone. And make no mistake, it will not be necessary to target everyone. A few examples are all that is necessary.

We are following Rome's path: first a Republic to be proud of, later a dictatorship to fear.

[Selfdfenz]

and was all cocked and unloacked to post it here, and here it is.

Sooner or later every job application will require that you sign a release to allow the possible employer to have a look at these records.

If the local PD can access this info, and sooner or later, they will be able to, there will be no privacy in the US for citizens or anyone else. At the local level our privacy will be either up for grabs or up for sale.

If Bush allows this thing to live-and-breath he will have a slim chance of re-election and ditto for his Rep fellows in Congress. I'm a Rep., voted for him and all of the last few decades of Rep. that have run for the White House or Congress.....except for his Dad on re-elcetion. I and many others could not get over the no new taxes fiasco.

Conservative Reps that support personal freedom will desert the voting booths in droves if thsi becomes reality. Mandates are razor thin these days. No pol can afford to crap on his base if he hopes to stay in office.

The problem is how will we ever know if they pulled the plug on this or just give lip service? Not even the Commies in the old SU went this far. And just when I thought the Rep were about to make some headway...now this.

All the time we have been worried the government wanted to register our guns so they can confiscate them there may have been a completely different move afoot. You needn't worry about somebody's guns when you have confiscated his or her identity and privacy and manipulate their lives. Those people are called...slaves.

I guess the Libs will be busting many elections next go round. Wouldn't have said this yesterday but I may just be a Lib next go round inspite of the wacky drug plank and pro-choice stance.
Two things I dislike to say the very least. That should tell you something.
S-

[SW9M]

The link

Bold type and smilie added by me.

Gilmore Panel Recommends Domestic Spy Effort

WASHINGTON — An advisory panel tasked with making recommendations for anti-terrorism efforts in the United States wants the government to create a new domestic spy agency that would engage in both foreign and domestic surveillance.

The new agency would also act as a clearinghouse of information coming in from the existing intelligence community — including the CIA and the FBI.

Former Virginia Gov. James Gilmore, chairman of the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction, also known as the Gilmore Commission, testified before the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Procurement on Thursday.

He said that despite fierce debate among panel members, and his own reservations about the impact of such an agency on civil liberties, "the commission doesn't see any other alternative," in the face of mounting terrorism threats and ongoing information-sharing obstacles between the intelligence agencies, local and state law enforcement and other federal agencies, like the military.

"We have raged over this in our commission for the last six months," he said. In a final vote over the recommendation, panel member Jim Greenleaf, a former administrator for the FBI, was the lone dissenter, saying that such an agency would step on the toes of the other intelligence agencies and would not necessarily be equipped to protect civil liberties.

The recommendation calls for the establishment of a national counterterrorism center, which would act as a "stand alone" independent agency of the Federal Executive Branch, but a full member of the intelligence community.

It would be responsible for the "fusion" of intelligence coming in from all sources, foreign and domestic, on potential terrorist attacks inside the United States. It would then disseminate that information to all appropriate "customers," including the intelligence community, Department of Defense, local and state entities and even the private sector.

Aside from that function, the new agency would engage in domestic and foreign surveillance related to terrorism threats. The agency would "operate under significant judicial policy and administrative constraints" and would not seek any expansion of authority under current federal surveillance laws, according to the report. Oversight would be conducted under the auspices of the Senate and House intelligence committees.

Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., chairman of the Military Procurement Subcommittee, said the establishment of a new agency was necessary to corralling all of the intelligence information floating in and out of the existing departments and was integral to protecting the country from another terrorist attack.

"It doesn't mean we have to create big brother," he said Thursday. "It does not violate the rights and freedoms of the American people.":barf:

But Rep. Rob Simmons, R-Conn., a former CIA agent, said he was concerned that a new agency would merely create a new level of bureaucracy before working out all of the cultural, philosophical and jurisdictional impediments that exist between the intelligence agencies already.

"You're just creating another bureaucracy with the same restrictions," he said to Gilmore in the hearing. "It looks nice but would it address the current threat? What I'm suggesting is the focus and the debate should be on the current structures and whether they are adequate to address the current threat."

Sources say that the panel has discussed the comparison of a new agency with the model of the British MI5 security services, which works with the military, law enforcement and both foreign and domestic intelligence in the interest of protecting the country from terrorist threats and serious crime.

When asked how the other intelligence agencies feel about a potential new member in their community, and whether jurisdictional problems might arise among them, Gilmore said, "I think there is a legitimate concern being expressed by them."

Meanwhile, it looks like the military might be already engaging in some "fusion" activities of its own.

Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that the Pentagon is already constructing a computer system that would provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement with direct access to both foreign and domestic personal data — from Internet e-mail to credit card transactions — without a search warrant.

The Times reported that Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, head of the Office of Information Awareness at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Pentagon, has described the system in Pentagon documents and in recent speeches. Such a system would require changes in congressional legislation and an amendment to the 1974 Privacy Act.

Gilmore's commission consists of 22 members from various professional stations — from fire and police chiefs to State Department and FBI officials. It has released three annual reports to Congress since its inception in 1999. The former governor said 64 of the 74 policy recommendations have been implemented "in whole or in part" by Congress as a result.

"The panel has had a major impact," on national security and homeland security policy, Gilmore said.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, the panel's mission to help establish terrorism response efforts at the local, state and federal levels has become a more urgent task, Gilmore said.

Aside from intelligence gathering and procurement issues, the upcoming annual report due Dec. 15 is expected to include recommendations on further use of the military, health preparations in the event of a bio-terrorist attack, agricultural terrorism and critical infrastructure protection.

This just makes me feel so warm and secure.:barf:

[alan]

(dup of first post due to thread merge)

[Justin Moore]

Total SATANIC Awareness.

The control grid is going on, my friends...

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/14/op...t&position=top

November 14, 2002
You Are a Suspect
By WILLIAM SAFIRE


ASHINGTON — If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you:

Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend — all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."

To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you — passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance — and you have the supersnoop's dream: a "Total Information Awareness" about every U.S. citizen.

This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario. It is what will happen to your personal freedom in the next few weeks if John Poindexter gets the unprecedented power he seeks.

Remember Poindexter? Brilliant man, first in his class at the Naval Academy, later earned a doctorate in physics, rose to national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan. He had this brilliant idea of secretly selling missiles to Iran to pay ransom for hostages, and with the illicit proceeds to illegally support contras in Nicaragua.

A jury convicted Poindexter in 1990 on five felony counts of misleading Congress and making false statements, but an appeals court overturned the verdict because Congress had given him immunity for his testimony. He famously asserted, "The buck stops here," arguing that the White House staff, and not the president, was responsible for fateful decisions that might prove embarrassing.

This ring-knocking master of deceit is back again with a plan even more scandalous than Iran-contra. He heads the "Information Awareness Office" in the otherwise excellent Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which spawned the Internet and stealth aircraft technology. Poindexter is now realizing his 20-year dream: getting the "data-mining" power to snoop on every public and private act of every American.

Even the hastily passed U.S.A. Patriot Act, which widened the scope of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and weakened 15 privacy laws, raised requirements for the government to report secret eavesdropping to Congress and the courts. But Poindexter's assault on individual privacy rides roughshod over such oversight.

He is determined to break down the wall between commercial snooping and secret government intrusion. The disgraced admiral dismisses such necessary differentiation as bureaucratic "stovepiping." And he has been given a $200 million budget to create computer dossiers on 300 million Americans.

When George W. Bush was running for president, he stood foursquare in defense of each person's medical, financial and communications privacy. But Poindexter, whose contempt for the restraints of oversight drew the Reagan administration into its most serious blunder, is still operating on the presumption that on such a sweeping theft of privacy rights, the buck ends with him and not with the president.

This time, however, he has been seizing power in the open. In the past week John Markoff of The Times, followed by Robert O'Harrow of The Washington Post, have revealed the extent of Poindexter's operation, but editorialists have not grasped its undermining of the Freedom of Information Act.

Political awareness can overcome "Total Information Awareness," the combined force of commercial and government snooping. In a similar overreach, Attorney General Ashcroft tried his Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS), but public outrage at the use of gossips and postal workers as snoops caused the House to shoot it down. The Senate should now do the same to this other exploitation of fear.

The Latin motto over Poindexter"s new Pentagon office reads "Scientia Est Potentia" — "knowledge is power." Exactly: the government's infinite knowledge about you is its power over you. "We're just as concerned as the next person with protecting privacy," this brilliant mind blandly assured The Post. A jury found he spoke falsely before.

[alan]

http://www.reason.com/0210/artifact.shtml )

[Justin Moore]

This is the single scariest thing I have seen in my adult life. Forget about Sarah Brady, forget about Josh Sugarman, forget about it ALL! Forget you ever even lived in a free country, this is the total takeover in one swell foop. Reichsmarshall Poindexter apparently intends to completely shred the Consitution in order to 'keep you safe'. And besides if you 'have nothing to hide' you have nothing to worry about...............

[Justin Moore]

Here's the article from Reason:

Suppose you're devising a logo for a new wing of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an office charged with developing intelligence tools and integrating the government's existing surveillance networks. Suppose that it has a vaguely sinister name—say, the Information Awareness Office—and that it's to be run by a former Iran-contra conspirator. What would your design be?

If you work for the actual Information Awareness Office, created earlier this year with one-time National Security Adviser John Poindexter at its helm, you'd depict a Masonic eye-in-the-pyramid blasting a sci-fi death ray across the globe. If you wanted to play on the fears of every paranoiac in the country, you couldn't do much better than the IAO's logo, on display at the Office's site. (That's where we got this low-resolution graphic, after DARPA stonewalled our attempts to secure a high-resolution version. Hmmm...)

Another agency may be trying to outdo the IAO. The Patent and Trademark Office's symbol for homeland security is an eyeball floating behind a keyhole, with an upside-down flag in the background. If a dissident Web site put up a picture like that, it would be accused of fomenting panic.

Semiotically speaking, this is the most inept administration in years. Either that, or its art department is trying to tell us something.