Battle to control US spy program
Barbara Gengler
JANUARY 21, 2003 

US privacy and civil liberties groups are battling to stop Congress 
funding a Pentagon counter-terrorism program that includes 
controversial government data surveillance.  

The Total Information Awareness (TIA) project, headed by retired admiral 
John Poindexter, would require banks, airlines, hotels, internet service 
providers and others to routinely transfer all private transaction 
information to the government for real-time monitoring.  

The system, parts of which are already operational, incorporates 
transaction data systems, biometric authentication technologies, 
intelligence data and automated virtual data repositories.  

According to the Defence Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), 
which developed TIA, the goal is to "revolutionise the ability of 
the US to detect, classify and identify foreign terrorists and decipher 
their plans".  

A January 14 letter signed by the coalition of watchdog groups, 
including the Electronic Privacy Information Centre (EPIC), Electronic 
Frontier Foundation, American Civil Liberties Union and the Centre for 
Democracy and Technology, warned the TIA "would put the details of 
Americans' daily lives under the scrutiny of government agents, 
opening the door to a massive domestic surveillance system".  

According to DARPA's own documents, the letter noted, "TIA will 
collect and mine vast amounts of information on the American public, 
including telephone records, bank records, medical records and 
educational and travel data".  

It warned Congress should stop the development of TIA while it looked 
closely at the program through oversight hearings, investigations and 
reporting. "Congress should prohibit the development of TIA," the letter 
stated.  

In another letter, to Attorney General John Ashcroft, four Democrats, 
including Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Senator Patrick Leahy 
and Senator Russell Feingold, expressed interest in the extent to which 
the department would rely on data mining to deal with the terrorism 
threat or other criminal activity, and how the technology would be used.  

"Advances in the technological capability to search, track or mine 
commercial and government databases and Americans' consumer 
transactions have provided powerful tools that have dramatically 
changed the ways companies market their products and services," 
Mr Leahy said.  

However, "collection and use by government law enforcement agencies 
of such commercial transaction data on law-abiding Americans poses 
unique issues and may intrude on privacy interests and chill First 
Amendment guarantees", he said.  

Senator Feingold will introduce legislation calling for the suspension 
of data mining efforts until Congress "has completed a thorough review" 
of the Poindexter program.  

Also in the Senate, Senator Ron Wyden, another Democrat, ahs moved 
to block all funding for TIA. He not only amended one of the unpassed 
federal spending bills to cut all funding to the program, but asked 
for a list of all federal agencies that would use TIA and why.  

"It's time for the Senate to put some reins on this program before it tips 
the balance with respect to privacy rights and the need to protect the 
national security of this country in a fashion that is detrimental to the 
nation," he said.  

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Source: "Australian IT" - http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/
0,7204,5861070%5E15319%5E%5Enbv%5E15306,00.html

Cheers, Steve..

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