U.S. Terrorism Agency to Tap a Vast Database of Citizens

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887324478304578171623040640006-lMyQjAxMTAyMDEwMjExNDIyWj.html?mod=wsj_valetbottom_email

by jalanco • 14 years ago

55 48 14 years ago

online.wsj.com

sologoub• 14 years ago

This is so typical - a government agency screws up, so it blames the fact that it didn't have enough powers, and does another power grab:

"However, Mr. Abdulmutallab and his underwear did alter U.S. intelligence-gathering. A Senate investigation revealed that NCTC had received information about him but had failed to query other government databases about him. In a scathing finding, the Senate report said, "the NCTC was not organized adequately to fulfill its missions."

"This was not a failure to collect or share intelligence," said John Brennan, the president's chief counterterrorism adviser, at a White House press conference in January 2010. "It was a failure to connect and integrate and understand the intelligence we had.""

From what I'm reading here, this person would have been within the jurisdiction of the previous rules as a person connected with terror activities. The agency just failed to connect the dots. If I recall recall correctly, the guys own father had contacted US Embassy to tell them that his son is trying to get involved with terrorists...

The solution to this problem seems to be better data interconnection between agencies, in order to ensure that as much detail about identified threats is available. I don't see how have more data about a much broader set of citizens is going to help... if anything, it's going to make the identification process more complex.

jalanco• 14 years ago

A couple of key paragraphs:

"Now, NCTC [National Counterterrorism Center] can copy entire government databases—flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited. Data about Americans 'reasonably believed to constitute terrorism information' may be permanently retained.

"The changes also allow databases of U.S. civilian information to be given to foreign governments for analysis of their own. In effect, U.S. and foreign governments would be using the information to look for clues that people might commit future crimes."

csense• 14 years ago

> The changes also allow databases of U.S. civilian information to be given to foreign governments for analysis of their own.

What forces those foreign governments to comply with the safeguards of US law?

Especially if when they hand over the data, the feds say "do what you need to do to tell us what we need to know (wink wink)". It's nothing less than "extraordinary rendition" for data.

dragonbonheur9• 14 years ago

Bin Laden won the war on terror. They're all scared now. Even China does not monitor its own citizens like that. Soon Chinese citizens will enjoy more freedom and privacy than western citizens.

mikegioia• 14 years ago

  Now, NCTC can copy entire government databases—flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others.

You don't think China has this info?

dragonbonheur9• 14 years ago

Chinese don't care what their own citizens do as long as they don't blow things up (or out of proportion).

People should note that while in the Western world technology has increased the powers of the wealthy minority, in the east it's the people that have learned to harness it. The Chinese "human flesh search" is notorious for bringing corrupt officials to justice and to find lost children. In the west it's just iSheep staring blankly into their shiny iDevices and not giving a rat's ass about anything.

tptacek11• 14 years ago

Sure. I mean, their local police are allowed to arrest people and send them to "Reeducation Through Labor" camps for 1-3 years without trial. But sure, the US, China, same thing.

guelo• 14 years ago

Are you saying the US does not detain people without charges for years at a time?

dragonbonheur9• 14 years ago

Same thing for Barry's NDAA. Except there's no chance to be reeducated. The only option is to be waterboarded. The only salvation for the United States is the total bankruptcy of their own government.

tokenadult• 14 years ago

Soon Chinese citizens will enjoy more freedom and privacy than western citizens.

Only if the one-party rule of Communist Party of China (CPC) ceases. Right now, under a policy introduced by that party as it consolidated power, there is not even freedom to change residence addresses in China.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-china-hukou-20121212,0...

And Chinese citizens enjoying "more freedom and privacy than western citizens" is not likely even if the CPC allows free and fair elections, in the near term. But I wish the common people of China well in gaining more freedom, as their cousins in Taiwan have done over the last thirty years.

中共下台.

dragonbonheur9• 14 years ago

Oddly enough I learned last week that there can be other political parties in china. It's just that the Communist Party is enormous by comparison. http://shanghaiist.com/2012/12/05/not_at_all_pointless_zhigo...

grecy• 14 years ago

> Soon Chinese citizens will enjoy more freedom and privacy than western citizens.

Soon Chinese citizens will enjoy more freedom and privacy than AMERICAN citizens.

dragonbonheur9• 14 years ago

Didn't you read anything about how the British are imitating the Americans and installing microphones and cameras in EVERY lamp post? Google around.

jamesmcn2• 14 years ago

If you haven't committed a crime how could you possibly need privacy, comrade?

dragonbonheur9• 14 years ago

You really do enjoy having lots of people watch your sex tapes, or know about your financial situation or about how you and your parents haven't been talking for so many years or knowing that your girlfriend/wife dated and slept with crowd of men before meeting you, huh?

jamesmcn2• 14 years ago

(psst: might want to have your sarcasm detector recalibrated, it appears to be giving erroneous readings)

EliRivers• 14 years ago

At risk of stating the obvious, the false positive rate will create a vast number of innocent citizens flagged for further investigation. This automated flagging will overwhelm the human investigators, creating a situation in which terrorists find it easier to hide and operate amongst the citizenry, with the added feature that innocent citizens swept up will become truculent and less likely to cooperate. Net result; the US government makes terrorism easier, at vast expense to the US taxpayer.

mcantelon• 14 years ago

No mention in this article (that I saw) that points out that this data is also used to find new candidates for the extrajudicial "kill list" using the "disposition matrix":

>the "disposition matrix" has been developed and will be overseen by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). One of its purposes is "to augment" the "separate but overlapping kill lists" maintained by the CIA and the Pentagon

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/24/obama-te...

There's been a slow, steady consolidation of state power post-9/11, including the establishment of NORTHCOM: a command post for war in North America. It seems like they're worried about domestic insurgence rather than conventional terrorism.

suprgeek• 14 years ago

A very telling line in the Article - "The guidelines provide rigorous oversight to protect the information that we have, for authorized and narrow purposes," said Alexander Joel, Civil Liberties Protection Officer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence"

A "guideline" is supposed to provide rigorous oversight...how many guidelines have you heard of that provide rigorous Anything? Basically the government wants to be able to Datamine every single database within their control for anything suspicious. Unfortunately the definition of "suspicious activity" can be elastic enough to be almost anything.

Occupy Wallstreet? - suspicious

Protest against Oil drilling - suspicious

Blog post criticizing NY police "stop & frisk" - suspicious

Criticize the Feds for overstepping on something - suspicious

Sad - we are sleep waking into the Total information awareness state. The terrorists attacks have worked - they have destroyed the very values that America was built on

dragonbonheur9• 14 years ago

Add to it that paying with cash is suspicious and should be reported immediately. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/02/14/fbi-perfect-terro...

dr_doom• 14 years ago

If you are a regular “cash customer” of a restaurant, you get treated like a king.

Good inside move.

pge• 14 years ago

I'm guessing they would prefer to be referenced as a "Counterterrorism Agency" rather than a "Terrorism Agency"...

U.S. Terrorism Agency to Tap a Vast Database of Citizens

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