- Language tucked inside the Homeland Security bill will
allow the federal government to track the e-mail, Internet use, travel,
credit-card purchases, phone and bank records of foreigners and U.S. citizens
in its hunt for terrorists.
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- In what one critic has called "a supersnoop's
dream," the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program
would be authorized to collect every type of available public and private
data in what the Pentagon describes as one "centralized grand database."
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- Computers and analysts are supposed to use all
this available information to determine patterns of people's behavior in
order to detect and identify terrorists, decipher plans and enable the
United States to pre-empt terrorist acts.
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- The project first appeared in the Senate Democratic
proposal for the new Homeland Security Department, which was defeated Wednesday
in a 50-47 vote. However it was included in the Republican-brokered agreement
that passed the House later that night in a 299-121 vote and is on the
fast track to pass the Senate by next week.
- The computer-generated project of raw data will "help
identify promising technologies and quickly get them into the hands of
people who need them," according to a congressional leadership memo
outlining the legislation.
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- In a blistering op-ed piece in yesterday's New
York Times titled "You Are A Suspect," columnist William Safire
compared the database to George Orwell's Big Brother government in the
novel "1984."
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- "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 FBI, 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," Mr. Safire wrote.
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- "There is a great danger in this provision.
It gives carte blanche to eavesdrop on Americans on the flimsiest of evidence,
if any evidence at all," said Phil Kent, president of the Southeastern
Legal Foundation.
- Mr. Kent called the provision "an unprecedented
electronic dragnet."
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- "I think it's the most sweeping threat to
civil liberties since Japanese-American internment," Mr. Kent said.
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- Mr. Kent and outgoing Rep. Bob Barr, Georgia Republican,
are lobbying the Senate to remove this and other provisions they say are
a threat to civil liberties and restrict the public's right to know of
government activities.
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- "In defense of members of Congress, many don't
read the whole legislation and very few people read the fine print,"
said Mr. Barr. "You would think the Pentagon planning a system to
peek at personal data would get a little more attention.
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- "It's outrageous, it really is outrageous,"
Mr. Barr said.
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- The bill establishes the Total Information Awareness
program within a new agency - the Security Advanced Research Projects Agency
(SARPA), which would be modeled on the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA), the central research office for the Defense Department
that pursues research and technology, and led to the creation of the Internet.
DARPA and SARPA both would be under the supervision of Adm. John Poindexter.
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- Neither Adm. Poindexter nor a spokesman at his
current agency, DARPA, could be reached for comment. The phone number listed
for Adm. Poindexter in the government directory reaches a recording that
says incoming calls are not accepted. A recording reached in the media
relations office states that Adm. Poindexter is "not accepting any
interview requests at this time."
- Adm. Poindexter first hit the public eye as national
security adviser for President Reagan during the Iran-Contra scandal. He
was convicted in 1990 on five felonies including lying to Congress and
destroying evidence.
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- At a DARPA conference in Anaheim, Calif., Adm.
Poindexter made his first public appearance since taking the post in February.
- "During the years I was in the White House, it was
relatively simple to identify our intelligence collection targets,"
Adm. Poindexter was quoted as saying in Government Executive magazine.
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- However, the United States now faces "asymmetrical"
threats that are loosely organized and difficult to find, and require new,
technology-driven defenses, he said. The goal of his new office is to consider
every source of information available worldwide to uncover terrorists,
the magazine said.
- Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information
Center, said the computer system would capture the data and analyze it
to find patterns that match terrorist activity.
- Authorizing the project would require amending the Privacy
Act of 1974. The language contained in the homeland security bill does
not address the act directly, but authorizes the creation of the agency.
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- Mr. Rotenberg said the database takes a convergence
of various factors to a system of public surveillance.
- "They think the technology is about catching terrorists
and bad guys, but these systems can capture a lot of data at different
levels without oversight, judicial review, public reporting or congressional
investigations. I can't think of a good countermeasure that would be good
to safeguard civil liberties in the United States," Mr. Rotenberg
said.
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- http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20021115-70231.htm
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