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02/23/2004 Archived Entry: "And you thought TIA went away..."
And you thought TIA went away...
Not by a long shot.
The government is still financing research to create powerful tools that could mine millions of public and private records for information about terrorists despite an uproar last year over fears it might ensnare innocent Americans.Congress eliminated a Pentagon office developing the terrorist tracking technology because of the outcry over privacy implications. But some of those projects from retired Adm. John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness effort were transferred to U.S. intelligence offices, congressional, federal and research officials told The Associated Press.
In addition, Congress left undisturbed a separate but similar $64 million research program run by a little-known office called the Advanced Research and Development Activity (ARDA) that has used some of the same researchers as Poindexter's program.
"The whole congressional action looks like a shell game," said Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, which tracks work by U.S. intelligence agencies. "There may be enough of a difference for them to claim TIA was terminated while for all practical purposes the identical work is continuing."
Poindexter's goal was to predict terrorist attacks by looking for telltale patterns of activity in passport applications, visas, work permits, driver's licenses, car rentals, airline ticket purchases and arrests, as well as credit transactions and education, medical and housing records.
But the research created a political uproar because such reviews of millions of transactions could put innocent Americans under suspicion. One of Poindexter's own researchers, David D. Jensen at the University of Massachusetts, has acknowledged that "high numbers of false positives can result."
Disturbed by the privacy implications, Congress last fall closed Poindexter's office, part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and barred the agency from continuing nearly all his research. Poindexter quit government, claiming his work was misunderstood.
But the work didn't die.
In killing Poindexter's office, Congress agreed to continue paying to develop highly specialized software to gather foreign intelligence on terrorists.
In a classified section summarized publicly, Congress gave money to the "National Foreign Intelligence Program," without openly identifying which intelligence agency would do the work.
It said the product of the research could only be used overseas or against non-U.S. citizens in this country, not against Americans on U.S. soil.
Thanks to reader Demeur for the link.
Replies: somebody speaks up.
At least this one claims to be looking only at "furriners." The one *I* worry about is Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange, or Matrix
"Matrix is operated by a private Florida company. It combines state government records, such as driver's license information, with commercially available data to create a database capable of compiling and analyzing a profile of every American, according to the ACLU.
"Matrix is yet another attempt by the government to place the innocent public under surveillance," said Carrie Davis, staff attorney for the ACLU of Ohio. "We want to know what sorts of personal data the State of Ohio is turning over to the Matrix database and what procedures, if any, are in place to ensure accuracy and privacy."
Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro said the Matrix is used "to identify the whereabouts or identity of persons who may have committed criminal acts, or who may be a threat to commit criminal acts."
"He said most of the information in Matrix is available to the public. He compared it to commonly used search engines such as Google. However, only law enforcement can use Matrix."
Posted by Xan @ 02/23/2004 07:55 PM NY
