Dataveillance – Moon of Alabama

February 9, 2006

Dataveillance

There are at least three new major surveillance-by-data-mining ("dataveillance") programs in use inside the U.S. government. I am convinced by now that these and others and the NSA’s communication surveillance are used to suppress the media and any opposition in Congress.

Several Democratic Senators on the Senate Judicial Committee did ask Gonzalez specifically about domestic spying. He did not answer that (or any) question.

The Christian Science Monitor (CSM) reports on a:

massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity.

The system is codenamed ADVISE and run by the Department of Homeland Security.

In Newsweek Michael Hirsh describes two programs. An NSA sponsored system called Trailblazer and another one which evolved from of the formally aborted Total Information Awareness (TIA) attempt which was renamed to Topsail.

Hirsh’s article is a bit strange. He essentially welcomes such programs now. On Topsail:

"one of the most hopeful new intelligence surveillance programs is one that is still demonized in the media and on Capitol Hill."

The punch of his article is to damn the NSA and others for not executing these programs effectively.

But while doing so he reveals that Congress, which did shut down TIA when it was first made public, gets circumvented with the renamed program. Is the sound of Hirsh’s piece some protection for revealing that whopper?

But back to dataveillance. Hirsh says:

"it means sifting through data to look for patterns"

But that is only part of it, and it is the least dangerous part from a privacy standpoint.

Real terrorists do know the tools of pattern matching are used. To avoid being caught in such a net they only have to behave reasonably "normal". Then, the only identifiable "terrorist" pattern is the commitment of a terror act.

That is the lecture the German police took in the 70s when they tried to find RAF members through a TIA like "Rasterfahndung". The RAF had anticipated that and its members intentionally did leave exactly the same data-trail that all normal people leave.
They used the average type of cars, lived in average housing, payed their bills and had no deviating traveling pattern. Not one RAF member was identified through the extensive, 10 year long effort.

But to have lots of dataveillance data may come in handy when someone in power wants to have special information about a specific person.

Paul Craig Roberts, a senior administration official under Reagan, flat out states:

Having eliminated internal opposition, the Bush administration is now using blackmail obtained through illegal spying on American citizens to silence the media and the opposition party.

The Washingon Times (Moonie) related "Insight" writes:

[Law enforcement sources] said the National Security Agency in cooperation with the FBI was allowed to monitor the telephone calls and e-mails of any American believed to be in contact with a person abroad suspected of being linked to al Qaeda or other terrorist groups.

At that point, the sources said, all of the communications of that American would be monitored, including calls made to others in the United States. The regulations under the administration’s surveillance program do not require any court order.

(BTW: I do write this from abroad. Are comments on this blog communication with someone "suspected to be linked .."? How do you know?)

How can a democracy function when members of the ruling party, the opposition party and the media know that there is the distinct possibility they are under surveillance?

Is there any of the better known journalists or anyone in Congress who is not caught by these data-fishing nets?

Maybe a representative has had an affair and left a trail with his credit card. Will she make a stand when those in power require her vote even against his conviction?

Is that investigative journalist using some embarrassing medication? Might the threat to reveal this, be a way to tame his curiosity?

With what information bits did Karl Rove threaten the Republicans on the Senate Judicial Committee? Does anyone believe those threats were really only about campaign money?

Posted by b on February 9, 2006 at 21:45 UTC | Permalink

Comments

@b,
How can a democracy function when members of the ruling party, the opposition party and the media know that there is the distinct possibility they are under surveillance?
Consequences of the Panopticon
as Foucault puts it:

the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 9 2006 22:10 utc | 1

leave it to wsj to explore the strain on our businesses to provide the equipment

“There’s been a significant increase in demand and pressure on companies for providing records, tracing calls and wiretapping,” said Mr. Warren, now a vice president for fiduciary services at NeuStar Inc. of Sterling, Va., which bought his company. “That’s led to a great deal of strain on carriers.”
Companies assisting carriers handling the increased law-enforcement demands typically sell software that simplifies the process of reviewing tens of thousands of phone-call records. Some third parties also provide assistance by setting up in-house compliance procedures, interacting with law-enforcement agencies and providing access to networks for wiretaps.
Now, Internet providers must also comply with the act. The Patriot Act, passed after the 2001 terrorist attacks, took matters a step further, giving law-enforcement agencies powers to monitor individuals and all the ways they communicate, rather than being limited to a specific communication device.

Posted by: annie | Feb 9 2006 23:00 utc | 2

The Network Architecture of Treason

Treasonous Devices: Weapons of Mass Surveillance

….

Posted by: hanshan | Feb 9 2006 23:44 utc | 3

Violating your rights – One Op at a time
Whistleblower says NSA violations bigger
WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 (UPI) — A former NSA employee said Tuesday there is another ongoing top-secret surveillance program that might have violated millions of Americans’ Constitutional rights.
Russell D. Tice told the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations he has concerns about a “special access” electronic surveillance program that he characterized as far more wide-ranging than the warrentless wiretapping recently exposed by the New York Times but he is forbidden from discussing the program with Congress.
Tice said he believes it violates the Constitution’s protection against unlawful search and seizures but has no way of sharing the information without breaking classification laws. He is not even allowed to tell the congressional intelligence committees – members or their staff – because they lack high enough clearance.
Neither could he brief the inspector general of the NSA because that office is not cleared to hear the information, he said.
Tice was testifying because he was a National Security Agency intelligence officer who was stripped of his security clearance after he reported his suspicions that a former colleague at the Defense Intelligence Agency was a spy. The matter was dismissed by the DIA, but Tice pressed it later and was subsequently ordered to take a psychological examination, during which he was declared paranoid. He is now unemployed.
Above Top Secret
Amy Goodman: What was your classification? How high up was your clearance?
Russell Tice: Well, clearances go up to the top secret level. But once you get to the top secret level, there are many caveats and many programs and things that can happen beyond that point. I specialized in what’s known as black world operations and programs that are very closely held, things that happen in operations and programs in the intelligence community that are closely held, and for the most part these programs are very beneficial to ultimately getting information and protecting the American people. But in some cases, I think, classification levels at these — we call them special access programs, SAPs — could be used to mask, basically, criminal wrongdoing.
***
“So, you have to ask yourself the question: Why would someone want to go around the FISA court in something like this? I would think the answer could be that this thing is a lot bigger than even the President has been told it is, and that ultimately a vacuum cleaner approach may have been used, in which case you don’t get names, and that’s ultimately why you wouldn’t go to the FISA court….And I’m certainly hoping that the President has been misled in what’s going on here and that the true crux of this problem is in the leadership of the intelligence community.”
***
“People in the intelligence community are afraid. They know that you can’t come forward. You have no protections as a whistleblower. These things need to be addressed.”
Black World Ops
…

Posted by: hanshan | Feb 15 2006 17:17 utc | 4

Linx fix:
An NSA Whistleblower Speaks Out
….

Posted by: hanshan | Feb 15 2006 17:22 utc | 5

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