“Americans must trade some privacy for security"

[summit]

Stuff like this makes me sick to my stomach. I followed the whole IAO/TIA controversy two years ago. I kidna forgot about it when congress cut funding and DARPA removed all information from their websites. Apparently, 1984 is still approaching at mach schnell.

What Price Freedom?
Where Big Brother Snoops on Americans 24/7
By TERESA HAMPTON & DOUG THOMPSON
Jun 7, 2004, 00:34


Customers of the Bank of America branch at 3625 Fairfax Drive in Arlington, Virginia, often wonder about the Arlington police car that is always parked in front of the building in the next block.

They also can’t help but notice the two armed guards from the private Cantwell Security Service who patrol the street in front of the building and eye each passerby warily.

“What’s going on across the street?” one woman asked while waiting in line to deposit her paycheck last Friday.

“Not sure,” said the man ahead of her in line. “Something to do with the government. The police cars and guards have been there since shortly after 9-11.”

“Oh,” she said. “No matter.”

Actually, if the woman knew what was happening inside the nondescript office building at 3701 Fairfax Drive, she might think it really does matter because the building houses the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s Total Information Awareness Program, the “big brother” program Congress thought it killed.

When the woman in line deposited her paycheck at the Bank of America branch, a record of that deposit showed up immediately in the computer databanks in the office across the street, just as financial, travel and other personal transactions of virtually every American do millions of time every minute.

Despite Congressional action cutting funding, and the resignation of the program’s controversial director, retired admiral John Poindexter, DARPA’s TIA program is alive and well and prying into the personal business of Americans 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“When Congress cut the funding, the Pentagon – with administration approval – simply moved the program into a ‘black bag’ account,” says a security consultant who worked on the DARPA project. “Black bag programs don’t require Congressional approval and are exempt from traditional oversight.”

DARPA also hired private contractors to fill many of the roles in the program, which helped evade detection by Congressional auditors. Using a private security firm like Cantwell, instead of the Federal Protective Service, helped keep TIA off the radar screen.

DARPA moved into the Arlington County building shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and established the TIA project under the USA Patriot Act and a number of executive orders from President George W. Bush.

TIA’s mission was to build a giant computer database with real time access to bank records, credit card companies, airlines and other travel companies, credit bureaus and other data banks to monitor, in real time, the financial transactions and travel of Americans and foreign citizens with accounts at the institutions.

Under provisions of the USA Patriot Act, the banks and other companies were forced to allow DARPA to access their files, a move normally considered an invasion of privacy.

When news of TIA first surfaced in 2002, along with the appointment of Poindexter, a key-figure in the Iran-Contra scandal, as director, citizens’ watchdog groups and some members of Congress took a second look. The uproar that followed led to the resignation of Poindexter, who had lied to Congress during the Iran-Contra investigation, and the elimination of funding for TIA.

But Congress left the door open by supplying DARPA with research funding to develop data mining alternatives to TIA. Instead, the Bush administration instructed the Pentagon to move TIA into the convert area of black bag operations and Congress was cut out of the loop.

Lt. Col. Doug Dyer, a program manager for DARPA, defends TIA as a necessary sacrifice in the war on terrorism.

“Americans must trade some privacy for security,” he says. “Three thousand people died on 9/11. When you consider the potential effect of a terrorist attack against the privacy of an entire population, there has to be some trade-off.”

The trade off means virtually every financial transaction of every American is now recorded and monitored by the federal government. Any bank transaction, all credit card charges plus phone records, credit reports, travel and even health records are captured in real time by the DARPA computers.

“Basically, TIA builds a profile of every American who has a bank account, uses credit cards and has a credit record,” says security expert Allen Banks. “The profile establishes norms based on the person’s spending and travel habits. Then the system looks for patterns that break from the norms, such of purchases of materials that are considered likely for terrorist activity, travel to specific areas or a change in spending habits.”

Patterns that fit pre-defined criteria result in an investigative alert and the individual becomes a “person of interest” who is referred to the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security, Banks says.

Such data mining is also called “database profiling” and is prohibited under Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against invasion of privacy says Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Program at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Steinhardt points out the information is already being used to create “no fly” lists of people who are thought to be a danger but that safeguards are not in place to insure the accuracy of the information.

“Once you get on a ‘no-fly’ list, how do you get off it?” Steinhardt asks.

Missouri Congressman William Clay, ranking minority member of the House Committee on Government Reform's Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, and Intergovernmental Relations, worries that DARPA is skirting the law by letting private contractors handle the data mining.

"The agencies involved in data mining are trying to skirt the Privacy Act by claiming that they hold no data," said Clay. Instead, they use private companies to maintain and sift through the data, he said.

"Technically, that gets them out from under the Privacy Act," he said. "Ethically, it does not."

When the Senate voted in 2003 to cut funding for TIA, Senators like Ron Wyden of Oregon thought they had put a stop to the problem.

"This makes it clear that Congress wants to make sure there is no snooping on law-abiding Americans," Wyden said after the vote.

But it didn’t. The Bush Administration, already recognized as one of the most secretive Presidencies in modern times, simply put the program under wraps and let it continue.

When Congress voted to cut the funded, the operation at 3701 Fairfax Drive should have shut down and Arlington County should have returned the officers assigned there to normal duty. However, the officers remained in place and additional security was added to the detail.

According to construction records on file in the Arlington County building and zoning office, more than 20 high-speed data lines have been installed at the location in the last 18 months. Microwave data antennas are also installed on the roof.

Pentagon spokesmen refuse to discuss what is happening in the building, citing "national security" as the reason.

When quized about TIA earlier, DARPA officials insist they have safeguards to prevent abuses but the record suggests otherwise.

“Given the military's legacy of privacy abuses, such vague assurances are cold comfort,” says Gene Healy, senior editor of the CATO Institute in Washington.

“During World War I, concerns about German saboteurs led to unrestrained domestic spying by U.S. Army intelligence operatives,” says Healy. “Army spies were given free reign to gather information on potential subversives, and were often empowered to make arrests as special police officers. Occasionally, they carried false identification as employees of public utilities to allow them, as the chief intelligence officer for the Western Department put it, ‘to enter offices or residences of suspects gracefully, and thereby obtain data.’”

In her book Army Surveillance in America, historian Joan M. Jensen noted, “What began as a system to protect the government from enemy agents became a vast surveillance system to watch civilians who violated no law but who objected to wartime policies or to the war itself.”

The Army’s recent debacle with treatment of Iraqi prisoners also suggests the American military system lacks either the ability or the restraint to police itself.

“There's a long and troubling history of military surveillance in this country,” Healy adds. “That history suggests that we should loathe allowing the Pentagon access to our personal information.”

While TIA allows the government to snoop on American citizens, experts in the data mining field say it won’t help fight terrorism.

"Terrorism is an adaptive problem,” says Herb Edelstein, president of data-mining company Two Crows. “It's pretty unlikely the next terrorist attack will be people hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings.”

Simson Garfinkel, author of Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century, agrees.

[summit]

*CONTINUED*

“Data mining is good for the purpose of increasing sales and figuring out where to place products in stores,” he says. “This is very different from figuring out if these products are going to be used for terrorist activities.”

Other experts say the chances for mistakes are huge.

“With meaningful pattern recognition, the order of magnitude of errors from inferences is huge, something like ten to the third (power),” says Paul Hawken, author of The Ecology of Commerce and the chairman of information mapping software company Groxis. “There would be an incalculable expense to monitor a thousand wrong hits for one correct inference.”

DARPA tried to interest Groxis in becoming part of the TIA project but the company declined, saying the project was neither feasible nor ethical. Hawken says he knows people with the National Security Agency who refused to work on TIA because of ethical concerns.

The dangers of TIA have created a coalition of strange bedfellows. The American Civil Liberties Union has teamed up with conservative Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum and even the Heritage Foundation to fight not only TIA but other abuses of Constitutional rights under the USA Patriot Act. Even former member of Congress Bob Barr, a conservative firebrand, has joined the effort.

Yet even with all this attention, TIA still exists and still watches Americans 24/7 from the office building on Fairfax Drive in Arlington. Although employees who work in the building are supposed to keep their presence there a secret, they regularly sport their DARPA id badges around their necks when eating at restaurants near the building. The straps attached to the badges are printed with “DARPA” in large letters.

“Yeah, they’re the spooks who work in the building over there,” says Ernie, the counterman at a deli near 3701 Fairfax Drive. “If this is how they keep secrets, I guess we should really be worried.”

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

I highlighted and bolded to emphasise certain points.

My feelings on the subject. As someone who has worked off databases and with datamining, I've seen the constant mistakes in the databases. What happens when some records or lines get swapped and the FBI breaks down John Adam's door looking for "JOHN MOHAMMED GET ON THE FLOOR AND PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD!" because you went to a sporting goods store or your habits just happen to set off the "suspicious activies" algorithm that is running on the database. False positive? This is an unprecedented and unwarranted invasion of our privacy.

I thought the steps to a 1984 surveilance society would be gradual... but here is a big ole jump.

"They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin.

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." - George Orwell.

Here is the IAO (information awareness office, TIA was their subprogram) logo from the old website (sciencia est potentia == "knowledge is power")

[DaveTV]

What is your point? http://www.arcticchat.com/forums/html/emoticons/huh.gif

[The Yeti]

It is a good thing I live in a snow cave and get my food by ambushing it instead of buying it with a "credit card." I wouldn't want your American CIA trying to turn me into to some super artic warrior brainwashed enemy soldier eating machine. Actually, that wouldn't be so bad.

[bad_roo]

Originally posted by SummitCo 1776
In her book Army Surveillance in America, historian Joan M. Jensen noted, “What began as a system to protect the government from enemy agents became a vast surveillance system to watch civilians who violated no law but who objected to wartime policies or to the war itself.”

At least we know what happened to KQ now.

[Schralper]

Dammit Summit,
ignorance IS bliss.
Now I just really freakin' paranoid. Cuz they really are out to get me!
This is not the way I should be educated. Thats the job of the school system right?

Knock, knock "Open up Schralper. this is DARPA!"

Love my country but fear my govt.
So true now!

[Buster Highmen]

Further proof that a vote for Bush is a vote for fascist autocracy.

[hot_sauce]

One thing that always made me slightly nervous is how when you go Amazon.com it says "welcome so and so" and then gives you "personalized" recommendations about what you should buy based on past purchases and even things that you've just looked at. Can't wait 'til the government starts (don't know if I should say "starts"), snooping around those types of databases and adding peoples names to "no fly" lists for looking at books like say:

Understanding Marijuana: A New Look at the Scientific Evidence by Mitchell Earleywine,

or Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II by William Blum, et al

Or looking at the latest Spearhead album (yeah, spearhead is about as radical as it gets , you'll be happy your tax dollars are paying for the feds to go to all their concerts and keep tabs on this truly dangerous musical threat to homeland security)


Sounds far fetched or paranoid but we live in a society where independent thought is quickly becoming something to be frowned upon.

Michael Moore was too famous to be censored by Disney, but not for lack of trying- this administration has a clear distaste for that whole pesky first amendment thing...

Article on Spearhead to follow...

[hot_sauce]

http://www.sfbayview.com/040903/fbit...ng040903.shtml

FBI targeting Michael Franti and Spearhead for peace song and anti-war activities

by Davey D

Looks like it’s more than just the Dixie Chicks coming under fire for speaking out against the war. Bay Area Hip Hop artist Michael Franti and his group Spearhead, while enjoying tremendous fan support, are under surveillance by the FBI. Recently, members of Michael Franti’s band got some late night visits from FBI agents who were concerned about his anti-war songs and activities. He explained what’s been going on the other day on the excellent radio show “Democracy Now!” (broadcast on KPFA 94.1 weekdays 6-7 and 9-10 a.m.). Here’s a transcript of that interview, courtesy of “Democracy Now!” (www.democracynow.org/franti.htm.):

Amy Goodman, host of “Democracy Now!”: For nearly a decade, hip-hop artist and activist Michael Franti has been a leading progressive voice in music. He grew out of the Bay Area music and political scene of the ‘90s and in 1986 he founded the drum and bass duo The Beatniks, paving the way for his next musical endeavor, The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. His most recent musical project is the musical collective Spearhead, begun in 1994, and he’s used his music to push social boundaries, speak out against sexual violence and encourage his community to prevent the spread of HIV, and he’s been very vocal in his opposition to war. Now that may be the reason why the government is looking at him and his group Spearhead. Welcome to “Democracy Now!,” Michael.

Michael Franti: Hi, Amy.

Amy: It’s good to have you with us. Can you talk about what’s been happening as you’ve been touring the country with songs like “Bomb the World.”

Michael: Well, we’ve been touring for the last year and a half performing that song, and everywhere we go it gets standing ovations - people begin to cry. People are just very grateful to hear any voices out there right now who are speaking in support of peace and human rights.

Amy: What’s happened as you’ve been on this tour?

Michael: Well, what’s happened most recently is that we performed at a rally on March 15 in San Francisco, and the next day, on the 16th, (a member of my band), who prefers to go unnamed, his mother received a visit from two plainclothes men from the military. And this band member of mine has a sibling who is in the Gulf. And they came in and talked to her and said, you have a child who’s in the gulf and you have a child who’s in this band Spearhead who’s part of the “resistance,” in their words. And they had pictures of us performing the day before at the rally. They had pictures of us performing at some of our annual concerts that we put on that are in support of peace and human rights.

They had his flight records for the past several months. They had the names of everybody who works in my office, our management office, Guerilla Management. They had his checking account records. They asked his mother a lot of questions about where he was, what he was doing in this place, why he was going here. They confiscated his sibling’s CD collection that they had brought over to listen to while they were in the Gulf, and basically were intimidating her about who she could talk to and which members of the press she should not speak to.

And basically what this signals to me is how we were particularly singled out or under any investigation for any activity because all the activity that we do is very much above board and all the events where photos were taken were all public things we were at. But what it does signal to me is that there’s a lot of us who are now making a blip on the radar, you know, whether we’re organizers at rallies, whether we’re musicians, whether we’re people who are speaking out, authors, writers, actors. And we’re beginning to make little blips on the radar. They’re starting to pay attention and collect information about what’s going on. You know, more important to me or more important than me, you know, being a part of that is the fact that our civil rights are being eroded across the board for every person.

And for musicians in particular, it’s a really hard time. Last week our label received a letter, a mass email from MTV, instructing the fact that no videos could be shown that mentioned the word bombing or war. No videos could be shown that had protesters in it. Any footage from military gave a list of prior videos that could not be shown, yet MTV has aired videos that show troops saying goodbye to their loved ones and going off to war in a very heroic fashion and troops which are gonna be coming home traumatized, wounded and dead and then be treated and thrown onto the scrap heap of veterans, as we’ve seen veterans treated in this country.

And at the Academy Awards, there were also letters and talk that went around saying not to speak out. Radio has put the word out not to air songs that are in opposition to the war and in support of peace. Meanwhile, our song, “Bomb the World,” which we just put out, is now in heavy rotation on a top youth radio station in Australia and in Denmark, and it’s expected to get added to a lot of stations in other countries.

Amy: A few days ago, Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill and I were at the Ani DiFranco concert at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center to talk about Democracy Now! and the importance of independent media in a time of war, just before she went on. And Clear Channel, which owns New Jersey Performing Arts Center, runs that venue, told her no political information could be given out and threatened to close down the concert if there was any political speech.

Michael: It’s incredible, it’s outrageous and I think it’s something that we all need to be aware of. And we need to support the arts, you know. Whether it’s music, whether it’s films, whether it’s dance performances or whatever, this is the last place, apart from Pacifica and a few other stations around the country, where these voices are being heard.

Amy: And Clear Channel, that runs 1,200 radio stations now, runs many of the big venues in this country for musicians.

Michael: So it’s important that we call these stations and demand that these voices be heard.

Amy: Well, Michael Franti, I want to thank you for being with us, as we go out with your voice, with “Bomb the World.”

To hear the song “Bomb the World,” go to Franti’s website: www.stayhuman.org/index.htm. If you wanna hear the Hip Hop remix, go to my site - I don’t think Franti has put it up on his site yet: www.daveyd.com/antiwarfrantibombtheworld.mp3.

What’s ironic about all this is that not too long ago Franti came on our radio show and broke down the history of Marley and told how during his prime he was in the crosshairs of the FBI’s and CIA’s counterintelligence program, Cointelpro. He spoke about how the power of music and its ability to shape public opinion and inspire people into action was something that governments all over the world have been aware of and feared.

Marley’s call for folks to rise up and to love one another was seen as a threat because he had the potential to unite people who would want to bring about some fundamental changes within their government. Hence artists like him were monitored.

The other thing Franti pointed out is that it was no mistake that Marley did not enjoy much urban - Black radio - play, which is something that he desperately wanted. There’s always been an attempt to separate artists with compelling messages from the masses of the people they desire to reach.

One thing about Franti is that everywhere he plays he attracts huge crowds. And despite having slamming Hip Hop songs that address societal ills like the prison industrial complex, HIV/AIDs and Media Control, he gets no urban radio play. This is in spite of the fact that he played on the Smoking Grooves Tour. This is despite the fact that he has had remixes of some of his popular songs done by the Fugees. This is despite the fact that he has had in group dope underground Hip Hop artists like Azeem and RadioActive. This is in spite of the fact that the free concerts that he pays for and annually puts on have not only attracted 20,000-plus crowds but have also included Digital Underground, Talib Kweli, The Coup, Mystic and KRS-One on the bill.

His new song “Bomb the World” remix features Bay Area soul singer Ledisi and Beatbox artist Radioactive. The Hip Hop/reggae track was freaked out by Sly and Robbie. The song is absolutely incredible and is perhaps one of the best anti-war songs to come out to date. It doesn’t advocate violence. It’s a call for peace and could easily be a song that Bob Marley would’ve done.

Interestingly, the song first raised eyebrows when he performed it on the Craig Kilborne show shortly after 9/11. The producers were enraged that Franti did the song and censored it from their broadcast. Several months later they went ahead and played the performance.

We’ll keep you posted on the outcome of all this.

Email Davey D at misterdaveyd@earthlink.net, and tune in to the world from a Hip Hop perspective at www.daveyd.com.

[bdog]

Originally posted by hot_sauce
Or looking at the latest Spearhead album (yeah, spearhead is about as radical as it gets , you'll be happy your tax dollars are paying for the feds to go to all their concerts and keep tabs on this truly dangerous musical threat to homeland security)


Article on Spearhead to follow...

Wonderful! I saw Spearhead here not long ago. Killer concert. Now I am an enemy of the state. assholes!

[milkman]

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin, 1759

[13]

Come on people, this has been happening all along.

Whenever I go into a public library, be it in Jackson Hole, East Lansing, or Salt Lake City, there are notices reminding you of the fact that the gov't is snoopy.

Don't wanna have your purchases tracked? Use cash 100% of the time.

[Evil E]

i dont get it summit. I thought you were a republican. Dont you know that this is antibush propaganda?

[basom]

i saw franti speak at a slam poetry contest in san fran a few years back.

spearhead played at the end of the show along with sal williams' musical side project.

the whole evening was inspirational and enlightening.

if it becomes more difficult for people to get together to share these views, and enlighten eachother it will be a sad day for america indeed.

[hot_sauce]

Originally posted by Evil E
i dont get it summit. I thought you were a republican. Dont you know that this is antibush propaganda?

conservative, pro military-industrial complex, and still believe in civil liberties, and not "big brother" style big government? (funny how the republican rhetoric is always anti big gov, and pro fiscal responsibility, but actions speak louder than words), then you gotta go Libertarian (I think... not too familiar with their platform though so I could be talking out my ass)

[iceman]

That's some crazy shit that both HS and SC posted. The only hope is the vote.

Anybody else worried about these electronic voting machines that don't produce a paper record? I sure as shit am.

[powpig]

Seems like John Kerry should be able to use this to his advantage. Just go public on this in criticizing Bush and he should have a clear path to the White House this fall. Of course Kerry would have to oppose this and promise to eliminate, not maintain the DARPA database. Oh wait, that'll never happen. Someone explain to me again how Bush & Kerry are different.

[hot_sauce]

well for starters they were "tapped" for skull & bones in completely different years...

[mr_gyptian]

Electronic voting isn't ready for prime time.

Michael Franti on a KBCO inside the studio the other evening. He is under the impression that Colin Powell is the SecDef. I thought he mis-spoke, but he repeated it three times. Maybe he should stick to music(which he's demonstrated quite an aptitude for).

Oh, and this whole demon Patriot Act thing. I was just wondering if anything as egregious as Waco or Ruby Ridge had happened since its inception.

[1080Rider]

Originally posted by hot_sauce
then you gotta go Libertarian ...

That's prolly where I am. I just want the gov't out of my shit. Don't want to support drug dealers and don't want to pay a shitload of taxes for busted up roads. I don't know the official libertarian platforms but I believe in the ideals. I also believe in the republican ideals, but they don't seem to be practiced anymore...

[iceman]

Originally posted by mr_gyptian
Electronic voting isn't ready for prime time.

I agree, but it's going into effect here in Maryland, and I would assume elsewhere.

The state is being sued by a group that wants to require that paper records be kept and they are fighting it tooth and nail. Kinda makes you wonder why.

[splat]

Originally posted by mr_gyptian
Electronic voting isn't ready for prime time.

Oh, and this whole demon Patriot Act thing. I was just wondering if anything as egregious as Waco or Ruby Ridge had happened since its inception.

Not that I know of. But I'm sure, at some level, the Bush Admnistration is seeking a group of innocents to slaughter in the name of patriotism. Just to keep everyone scared, ya know.

[iceman]

Awesome humor piece from last week's New Yorker

Check it out.

[Grange]

Originally posted by 1080Rider
That's prolly where I am. I just want the gov't out of my shit. Don't want to support drug dealers and don't want to pay a shitload of taxes for busted up roads. I don't know the official libertarian platforms but I believe in the ideals. I also believe in the republican ideals, but they don't seem to be practiced anymore...

I can't speak about all Libertarian candidates but in our last gubernatorial election we had 4 major candidates from the Repubs, Dems, Greens, and Libs. The Libertarian had a platform to cut DOT's funding 50% before looking for further cuts. So if you don't want busted up roads Libertarian may not be the best fit.

[mr_gyptian]

Originally posted by splat
Not that I know of. But I'm sure, at some level, the Bush Admnistration is seeking a group of innocents to slaughter in the name of patriotism. Just to keep everyone scared, ya know.

Release, reverse rotation, Sploosh!