WASHINGTON - Two cutting-edge computer projects designed to preserve the privacy of Americans were quietly killed while Congress was restricting Pentagon data-gathering research in a widely publicized effort to protect innocent citizens from futuristic anti-terrorism tools.
As a result, the government is quietly pressing ahead with research into high-powered computer data-mining technology without the two most advanced privacy protections developed to police those terror-fighting tools.
"It's very inconsistent what they've done," said Teresa Lunt of the Palo Alto Research Center, head of one of the two government-funded privacy projects eliminated last fall.
Even members of Congress like Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who led the fight to restrict the Pentagon terrorism research, remain uncertain about the nature of the research or the safeguards. He won a temporary ban on using the tools against Americans on U.S. soil but wants to require the administration to give Congress a full description of all its data-mining research.
"We feel Congress is not getting enough information about who is undertaking this research and where it's headed and how they intend to protect the civil liberties of Americans," said Chris Fitzgerald, Wyden's spokesman.
The privacy projects were small parts of the Pentagon's Terrorism Information Awareness research.
The project was the brainchild of retired Adm. John Poindexter, who was driven from the Reagan administration in 1986 over the Iran-Contra scandal. Some 15 years later, he was summoned back by the Bush administration to develop data-mining tools for the fight against terrorism.
Poindexter's new software tools, far more powerful than existing commercial products, would have allowed government agents to quickly scan the private commercial transactions and personal health records of millions of Americans and foreigners for telltale signs of terrorist activity.
Partly to appease critics, Poindexter also was developing two privacy tools that would have concealed names on records during the scans. Only if agents discovered concrete evidence of terrorist activities would they have been permitted to learn the identities of the people whose records aroused suspicion.
One privacy project worked with Poindexter's Genisys program, which scanned government and commercial records for terrorist planning. The other was part of his Bio-ALIRT program, which scanned private health records for evidence of biological attacks.
Late last year, Congress closed Poindexter's office in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, in response to the uproar over its impact on privacy.
But Congress allowed some Poindexter projects, including some data-mining research, to be transferred to intelligence agencies. Congress also left intact similar data-mining research begun in the fall of 2002 by the Advanced Research and Development Activity, or ARDA, a little-known office that works on behalf of U.S. intelligence.
The research sponsored by ARDA, called Novel Intelligence from Massive Data, is so similar to some work done for Poindexter that Lunt offered to adapt her privacy protection software. ARDA and other agencies weren't interested because Congress had killed the original projects.
"When I went to talk to them, ARDA made clear they don't want to get into any area Congress doesn't want to fund," Lunt said.
It's not clear what, if any, privacy research is being done by ARDA or by the surviving remnants of Poindexter's program.
Last fall's Intelligence Authorization Act approved continued research on the type of powerful data-mining Poindexter envisioned but said "the policies and procedures necessary to safeguard individual liberties and privacy should occur concurrently with the development of these analytic tools, not as an afterthought."
ARDA said it obeys all privacy laws and hasn't given its researchers any government or private data, but it declined to say whether it is sponsoring any research on privacy protection.
Lunt, a former DARPA program manager, was developing privacy protection software for Poindexter's Genisys program. Her software shielded identities in the records the government reviewed, restricted each intelligence analyst to only the data he or she was authorized to see and created a permanent record to track cheaters.
Professor LaTanya Sweeney of Carnegie Mellon University was the principal researcher developing privacy protections for the Bio-ALIRT project. An early version of Bio-ALIRT was used to help protect President Bush's 2001 inauguration and the 2002 Olympics before Sweeney developed her privacy software.
She also presented her work last fall to officials of various agencies and said she was told they "might want to continue the work. But they came through with zero dollars."
The bio-surveillance system monitors symptoms of patients at emergency rooms and doctors' offices and such less-obvious sources as increases in grocery store orange juice sales and in school absenteeism in hopes of detecting a biological attack. Names are concealed until evidence suggests victims need to be treated.
Sweeney said DARPA paid to develop the privacy software but didn't pay for a public field test. "The tool just sits there unused," she said. "People think they have to sacrifice privacy to get safety. And it doesn't have to be that way."
FBI wants to tap high-speed Internet
Declan McCullagh and Ben Charny
CNET News.com
March 15, 2004, 10:10 GMT
A far-reaching proposal from the FBI, made public on Friday, would require all US broadband Internet providers, including cable modem and DSL companies, to rewire their networks to support easy wiretapping by police.
The FBI's request to the Federal Communications Commission aims to give police ready access to any form of Internet-based communications. If approved as drafted, the proposal could dramatically expand the scope of the agency's wiretap powers, raise costs for cable broadband companies and complicate Internet product development.
Legal experts said the 85-page filing includes language that could be interpreted as forcing companies to build back doors into everything from instant messaging and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) programs to Microsoft's Xbox Live game service. The introduction of new services that did not support a back door for police would be outlawed, and companies would be given 15 months to make sure that existing services comply.
"The importance and the urgency of this task cannot be overstated," says the proposal, which is also backed by the US Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration. "The ability of federal, state and local law enforcement to carry out critical electronic surveillance is being compromised today."
Because the eavesdropping scheme has the support of the Bush administration, the FCC is expected to take it very seriously. Last month, FCC chairman Michael Powell stressed that "law enforcement access to IP-enabled communications is essential" and that police must have "access to communications infrastructure they need to protect our nation."
The request from federal police comes almost a year after representatives from the FBI's Electronic Surveillance Technology Section approached the FCC and asked that broadband providers be required to provide more efficient, standardised surveillance facilities. Such new rules were necessary, the FBI argued, because terrorists could otherwise frustrate legitimate wiretaps by placing phone calls over the Internet.
"It is a very big deal and will be very costly for the Internet and the deployment of new technologies," said Stewart Baker, who represents Internet providers as a partner at law firm Steptoe & Johnson. "Law enforcement is very serious about it. There is a lot of emotion behind this. They have stories that they're very convinced about in which they have not achieved access to communications and in which wiretaps have failed."
Broadband in the mix
Broadband providers say the FBI's request would, for the first time, force cable providers that sell broadband to come under the jurisdiction of 1994's Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which further defined the already existing statutory obligations of telecommunications carriers to help police conduct electronic surveillance. Telephone companies that use their networks to sell broadband have already been following CALEA rules.
"For cable companies, it's all new," said Bill McCloskey, a BellSouth spokesman.
Several cable providers, including Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cablevision Systems, had no immediate comment on the FBI's request.
The FBI proposal would also force Vonage, 8x8, AT&T and other prominent providers of broadband telephone services to comply with CALEA. Executives from these companies have said in the past that they all intend to comply with any request law enforcement makes, if technically possible.
Broadband phone service providers say they are already creating a code of conduct to cover some of the same issues the FBI is addressing -- but on a voluntary basis, according to Jeff Pulver, founder of Free World Dialup. "We have our chance right now to prove to law enforcement that we can do this on a voluntary basis," Pulver said. "If we mandate and make rules, it will just complicate things."
Under CALEA, police must still follow legal procedures when wiretapping Internet communications. Depending on the situation, such wiretaps do not always require court approval, in part because of expanded wiretapping powers put in place by the USA Patriot Act.
A Verizon representative said on Friday that the company has already complied with at least one law enforcement request to tap a DSL line.
The new proposal surprised privacy advocates by reaching beyond broadband providers to target companies that offer communications applications such as instant-messaging clients.
"I don't think it's a reasonable claim," said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Centre. "The FCC should seriously consider where the FBI believes its authority... to regulate new technologies would end. What about Bluetooth and USB?"
Baker agrees that the FBI's proposal means that IP-based services such as chat programs and videoconferencing "that are 'switched' in any fashion would be treated as telephony." If the FCC agrees, Baker said, "you would have to vet your designs with law enforcement before providing your service. There will be a queue. There will be politics involved. It would completely change the way services are introduced on the Internet."
As encryption becomes glued into more and more VoIP and instant-messaging systems such as PSST, X-IM and CryptIM, eavesdropping methods like the FBI's Carnivore system (also called DCS1000) become less useful. Both Free World Dialup's Pulver, and Niklas Zennstrom, founder of Skype, said last month that their services currently offer no easy wiretap route for police, because VoIP calls travel along the Internet in tens of thousands of packets, each sometimes taking completely different routes.
Skype has become a hot button in the debate by automatically encrypting all calls that take place through the peer-to-peer voice application.
The origins of this debate date back to when the FBI persuaded Congress to enact the controversial CALEA. Louis Freeh, FBI director at the time, testified in 1994 that emerging technologies such as call forwarding, call waiting and mobile phones had frustrated surveillance efforts.
Congress responded to the FBI's concern by requiring that telecommunications services rewire their networks to provide police with guaranteed access for wiretaps. Legislators also granted the FCC substantial leeway in defining what types of companies must comply. So far, the FCC has interpreted CALEA's wiretap-ready requirements to cover only traditional analogue and wireless telephone service, leaving broadband and Internet applications in a regulatory grey area.
Under the FBI's proposal, Internet companies would bear "sole financial responsibility for development and implementation of CALEA solutions" but would be authorised to raise prices to cover their costs.
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Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there --Clare Booth Luce
If you want to wear your “Dump Dubya” button in Crawford, Tex., a few miles from the president's ranch, make sure you get approval from the police chief. Wearing a political button could violate Crawford’s protest ordinance that requires a $25 permit and prior approval by police. A February 16 verdict by a six-person jury meeting in a rented recreation center room upheld the ordinance. Five peace activists stopped at a Crawford roadblock en route to protests near the president’s ranch last May were convicted of violating the city’s parade and procession law. They were fined $200 to $500 and plan to appeal.
Increasing limits on protest aren’t limited to one-horse Texas towns with Bush memorabilia shops. Government surveillance and the criminalization of dissent are growing and activists and civil liberties advocates say Americans need to be worried. Two significant recent episodes prove their point:
* In Des Moines, the U.S. Attorney Office issued and then, under pressure, dropped a gag order and subpoena that demanded information about who attended and what was discussed at a peace forum. The supoenas also required annual reports from the Drake University chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. The campus group sponsored a forum November 15, 2003, a day before a run-of-the-mill peace rally at a National Guard facility. Among those subpoenaed was the executive director of the Catholic Peace Ministry. Faced with mounting criticism, the government also withdrew subpoenas for four specific protestors.
* The Texas Civil Rights Project condemned U.S. Army intelligence agents who wanted a roster of those who attended a conference on women and Islamic law at the University of Texas law school in Austin. Intelligence agents are also accused of posing as lawyers during the February 4 event. The U.S. Army Intelligence Security Command has said it is looking into the incident. The law school’s president said it was the first time in 30 years he had heard of the government investigating a law school forum or seminar.
“When the government intimidates people expressing their opinions non-violently in Iowa, the civil rights of all Americans are questioned,” said Joseph Truong, of the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition. His group’s second annual national Books Not Bombs Day of Action is scheduled for March 4. Last year most demonstrations went well and some were supported by schools. But at least 300 students were suspended, 151 students arrested and two schools locked down, Truong said.
Still, Truong’s group is moving forward with its planned protest. “These are not terrorists, these are people who are dissenting. I don’t think people believe the Catholic Peace Ministry is a threat,” said Caroline Palmer, a member of the National Lawyers Guild. The guild has over 6,000 members and chapters at over 100 law schools and in nearly every state. It is dangerous to lump peace activists, or other dissenters, with legitimate targets for criminal investigations, she said.
“We have been urged by the Bush administration that we have to trade off liberty for security and that’s not true,” said Bill Dobbs of United or Peace and Justice, a national coalition of over 600 groups opposed to faulty U.S. foreign policy and devoted to social and racial justice. Dobbs noted local ordinances that limit protest are growing and have surfaced in small towns, like Crawford, Texas, and big cities like Miami.
During a major protest against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) meeting last year in Miami, demonstrators found local laws governed how big puppets could be, he said. In other instances, people were arrested for standing across the street from a protest site or for simply wearing black, which police assumed made them anarchists, Dobbs added. Protestors are hit with over charges, meaning what might have been a simple arrest for civil disobedience can now mean multiple criminal charges. “People and journalists need to be looking around the entire landscape and asking what is going on,” said Dobbs. With the new surveillance and police powers, it will likely to take years to know how far the authorities have gone, he added.
“Why would government anti-terror resources be targeted at anti-war activists?” asked Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, of the Partnership for Civil Justice and a board member for the anti-war group International A.N.S.W.E.R. She argues that the government activity is clearly aimed at intimidation and has no legal basis. “When you have a government carrying out criminal, immoral activity, you have a right to protest,” she says. Verheyden-Hilliard warns against falling for the “good protestor-bad protestor” divisions. In the 1960s, authorities wanted to label and isolate the Black Panthers as the bad radicals to justify a violent assault on the Black Power movement, Verheyden-Hilliard said.
Abuses within the notorious federal domestic spying and disruption program known as Cointelpro, which targeted the civil rights and Black Power movements as well as thousands of other activists from the 1950s to early 1970s, led to prohibitions on some government spying activity. However, many of those prohibitions have been lifted. The Partnership for Civil Justice has a class action lawsuit going against the District of Columbia and federal law enforcement authorities for hundreds of arrests during anti-war and IMF/World Bank protests on Sept. 27, 2002. A U.S. District Court judge certified the suit in late September. The judge ordered release of an internal police document about the arrests that Mayor Anthony Williams had withheld for months.
Lawsuits stemming from police misconduct during the Bush inauguration in 2001 and the arrests of over 600 people in April 2000 are ongoing.
On February 4, the National Lawyers Guild Mass Defense Committee filed a civil suit in Miami challenging ordinances enacted just before the FTTA gathering. One provision made it unlawful for more than seven people to gather for more than 30 minutes outside of a structure for a common purpose. Though Verheyden-Hilliard calls the Bush administration guilty of “cynical manipulation of the political climate” after Sept. 11, she said civil liberties erosions didn’t start with the Bush-Ashcroft team. That means continued vigilance regardless of who is in the White House, she said.
Heavy surveillance is expected and likely already underway for the huge demonstrations in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and other cities planned by International A.N.S.W.E.R. and other groups for March 20, the one-year anniversary of the war on Iraq. International A.N.S.W.E.R. has already filed a Freedom of Information Act request about Justice Department activity related to the peace movement.
A government memo, which surfaced last November and was reported in the New York Times called for an increased focus on peace activists by law enforcement. Yet the repeated harassment and the knowledge that it will continue isn’t stopping activists. “Less activism is exactly what these measures are designed to create,” said Wayne Krause, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project. For activists, the only response is to keep organizing and getting people out in the streets and using their civil rights.
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Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there --Clare Booth Luce
posted on March 16, 2004 07:43:05 PM new
Bunni, they don't care about privacy. They never did. Only it is worse now. The biggest problem is they hire people who misuse access they have to proprietary information. If they think there is a problem with Identity theft now, wait until this information is sold on the Internet if its not being done so already.
It's an intrusion and a bizarre form of unwelcomed, unauthorized, voyeurism is what it is.
posted on March 16, 2004 09:12:24 PM new"The ability of federal, state and local law enforcement to carry out critical electronic surveillance is being compromised today."
It's the civil rights of the American people that are being compromised.today. Seisint /ACCURINT then MATRIX and now they're taking over the interntet.
posted on March 17, 2004 06:35:59 AM new
Just extends current laws that were designed to tap phones to the new technology of the internet. With data encryption and ISPs who do not log connections, the interent is a terrorist's best possible method of communication.
posted on March 17, 2004 06:53:22 AM new
Just put an electronic ID on everyone and require a permit to be more than 20 miles from home or work.
What - don't you want to be safe?
posted on March 17, 2004 06:59:46 AM newthe internet is a terrorist's best possible method of communication.
But that doesn't matter to the ultra-left. They'd much rather focus on those 'could happen theories', rather than the fact that this is another method of protecting our nation.
posted on March 17, 2004 07:55:34 AM new
Linda, how would you feel if a stranger or some so-called law enforcement person came into your home and went through all your banking records, your health records, your purchasing receipts and anything else that should only be privey to you or your family?
That is in essence what we have here. It allows them to ever broaden the sweep they want to do, even if one is not remotely connected with terrorism.
How can you possibly feel that is just A-Ok and alright?
posted on March 17, 2004 08:02:59 AM new
Gravid, if civil liberations do not fight this, that is what it is coming to, isnt it?
G.D. conservatives - they really do want to see that apololyptic prediction come true. We'll all have our digital chip numbers inserted in our skin, and every bit of info will be scanned everywhere you go. But ah, we will be safe!!
posted on March 17, 2004 08:30:06 AM new
" Linda, how would you feel if a stranger or some so-called law enforcement person came into your home and went through all your banking records, your health records, your purchasing receipts and anything else that should only be privey to you or your family?"
If he could prove the need for a warrant to a judge, more power to him. Hopefully they'll organize the stuff when they return it.
posted on March 17, 2004 08:34:09 AM new
neroter - I have stated many times on these threads that the changes that have either taken place or have been called for present absolutely no threat to the average American.
It's a fact that there are terrorists cells in our country. It's a fact that some people in America have been funding the terrorists. It's a fact that the first obligation of our government is to protect it's citizens.
In order to do that they need to be able to use the tools necessary to check on those they feel are threats, are supporters of these terrorists. They need to be able to apply our current laws to the new technology that has come about since those laws were written.
The government can already check on any of my records they want to. And I have nothing to hide. They won't find a thing that would lead them to believe I'm working with those who would like to see our nation destroyed.
posted on March 17, 2004 11:50:27 AM new
desquirel, thats a major point right there: no warrant needed. It is the blanket authorization that extends beyond the scope of looking for terriorists that is troubling.
And Linda, you may not have nothing to hide, but I bet you'd still balk if someone came into your home and just wanted to have a look see, just because they could. Many people now keep virtual records on their computers. Its really not about having something to hide. Its about the dignity to move about in peace in this life without being shadowed by the government or anyone else. There is a *right* to privacy, you know and where they are going with this violates it.
posted on March 17, 2004 10:43:18 PM new
" no warrant needed. It is the blanket authorization that extends beyond the scope of looking for terriorists that is troubling. "
No it is not. It is a "mandate" for the ISP to put in place a system whereby internet communications can be traced if need be. Even at that, people could encrypt their messages. But at least there would be a trail, though undecipherable, from that bungalow in NJ to a blind shielk in Egypt.
posted on March 18, 2004 04:48:20 AM new
Sounds like people are missing the point that in this country we can also repeal laws...
Also Judges can decide if your "rights" have been walked over... it is not something makes you guilty.
Oh and neroter better look at the search and seizure laws of your state... think you will find that you will allow them a "lookse" or you will be waiting at the curb until they can get a warrant...
posted on March 18, 2004 07:16:38 AM new
duh,twelve there has to be probable cause which is not really integrated in this new search.
I will give you an example. An old friend of mine, an ex army Sgt. is now working in Iraq for one of the contractors. She just sent me an email from Iraq to say hi. I emailed her back. So because there is traffic going from my computer ISP to Iraq, does that leave me open to suspicion and or tracking by some government official? Yes, it does. And its friggin bogus!
posted on March 18, 2004 05:11:25 PM new
They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety. --Benjamin Franklin
As a rule, dictatorships guarantee safe streets and terror of the doorbell. In democracy the streets may be unsafe after dark, but the most likely visitor in the early hours will be the milkman.--Adam Michnik
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Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there --Clare Booth Luce
