- WMR has been reporting for some time on the massive thefts
of personal data by a covert U.S. intelligence "black bag" program
to populate a renewed secret Total Information Awareness System series
of databases. Since being cut off from funding by Congress in 2003, the
TIA has continued secretly under the aegis of the Department of Homeland
Security and the National Security Agency. WMR's sources in the Intelligence
Community have told us on background that many of the so-called data thefts
are being carried out by U.S. intelligence black bag teams operating outside
of legal authority.
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- TIA's former program director, Iran-contra felon Admiral
John Poindexter, resigned in August 2003 from the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA) Total Information Awareness Office (IAO) after
details of the project emerged. After Congress cut funding, the IAO was
closed and its logo, featuring a Masonic "all seeing eye" atop
a pyramid scanning the earth, was retired.
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- TIA was an offshoot of Poindexter's Genoa project, a
deep data mining system developed by SYNTEK, Inc., a company for which
he served as Senior Vice President. Poindexter has also worked for other
companies engaged in mass data surveillance, including Saffron Technology,
Inc. and Presearch, Inc.
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- However, according to Wired magazine, the TIA's clone
has been developed, in conjunctions with Poindexter's former assistants
at IAO, by the government of Singapore, one of the most invasive governments
in the world when it comes to personal surveillance. The new TIA, called
Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning (RAHS), was unveiled. In January,
Poindexter joined the board of BrightPlanet, a Sioux Falls-based company
that markets one of the most invasive data mining systems in the world
and has the U.S. Intelligence Community as a priority target in its marketing
plans.
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- Poindexter's Total Information Awareness System is back,
with chopsticks.
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- BrightPlanet's partners include Lockheed Martin, the
world's largest war profiteer; Factiva, a Dow Jones company that gathers
open source news information; Basis Technology, which extracts "meaningful
intelligence from unstructured text in Asian, European, and Middle Eastern
languages;" Convera, which markets software tools that searches "video,
image and audio information, in multiple languages;" ASP Solutions
Ltd., which provides "information services with Internet Monitoring
& Surveillance at the core;" Klinx, which "harvests content
from sources throughout the Internet, including the Deep Web;" and
Phoenix Global Intelligence Systems, which claims it is "comprised
of talented, visionary and dedicated individuals from around the globe
who have come together with common cause. Embracing the forces of globalisation
[sic] and technology, they embody the very spirit that the enemy seeks
to destroy. Unrestrained by nationality and not beholden to political leaders,
Phoenix Global Intelligence Systems represents the future of global security
provision." Phoenix is composed of 40 "concerned citizens"
who monitor the Internet to look for terrorists and pass tips on to the
government. A cyber-vigilante group is more like it former CIA Counter-terrorism
chief Vince Cannistraro called Phoenix's work "a vigilante kind of
activity" in an interview last August with the Argus (South Dakota)
Leader.
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- Wired reports that two of Poindexter's chief assistants
at IAO, John Peterson of the Arlington Institute, and Dave Snowden. Were
top consultants on developing RAHS. Snowden is Chief Scientific Officer
for Cognitive Edge, a Singapore company that developed RAHS. The RAHS system
is scheduled to be deployed as a massive data mining program by the Singapore
government and will scan data from medical information to raw surveillance
data.
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- Ominously, the RAHS roll out in Singapore was attended
by four of the five ECHELON signals intelligence partner nations: United
States, Australia, United Kingdom, and New Zealand. In addition, Israel
attended the RAHS seminar. Israel and Singapore have become close intelligence
and military partners. Wired reports that Singapore sent a high-level delegation
to the United States to discuss RAHS with officials of the Department of
Homeland Security and the Directorate of National Intelligence in early
March. Patrick Neary, a former Senior Executive Analyst for the Army's
Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence and now the chief strategist for
DNI chief Admiral Mike McConnell, a former NSA Director, cancelled his
meeting with the RAHS team at the last minute. McConnell, after retiring
as NSA Director, became a head honcho at Booz Allen Hamilton, a major intelligence
contractor that has also been conducting data mining for the US Intelligence
Community, including the joint NSA-CIA "First Fruit" database
that monitors journalists to identify government leakers.
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- The Electronic Privacy Information Center successfully
sued the Department of Defense over its refusal to provide details of the
TIA pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. However,
since Poindexter no longer works for a government agency, as predicted
at the time he left the Pentagon, he became much harder to track. Now,
he has the government of Singapore to provide him financial and operational
cover for his intrusive Orwellian technology.
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- http://waynemadsenreport.com/
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