Spies Like US: Publicizing Privacy

Ever since this cockamamie war on Terror has begun, our own government has been reaching out to corporations to feed them information to feed their national security supercomputers. Last year we found out that the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth (tons more from Truthdig).

Sen. Patrick Leahy said last January that at least 52 federal agencies use data-mining technologies and at least 199 data-mining programs are operating or planned throughout the government, including 14 within the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and Health and Human Services. Those do not include programs run by the National Security Agency.

Data mining is a growth industry and bound to grow larger by the year. Americans who have been using credit cards or subscribing to magazines have been leaving a financial identity trail catalogued by database companies and then resold to the U.S. government. Federal and state governments pay about $50 million annually to comb through the databases of one such company, ChoicePoint, which compiles and sells personal information on U.S. residents gathered from sources such as motor vehicle and credit records, car and boat registrations, liens and deed transfers, and military records. There are many others.

People for the American Way says:

Data mining is not an issue only at the federal level. The Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange (MATRIX) is a pilot program currently underway in eight states – Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Utah. The MATRIX is designed to pull together sensitive state, local, and federal law enforcement data and intelligence, as well as information from other public databases such as motor vehicle and property records – including biometric identifying information like digital photographs – into a single system. Private databases that maintain information on individuals would also be included. In addition to being searchable by law enforcement, the MATRIX database could be used to automatically analyze these broad categories of information for “anomalous” or “suspicious” activities and patterns.

So here's my idea. Since our privacy is a matter of public record, maybe we need to find a friendly corporation that will protect our privacy. Basically for a fee, this company will search and purge or store all known data that is out there about us.

Of course, the first place the NSA will get a subpoena for will be this corporation. So, what we need is a sort of a witness protection plan that creates a false identity for us, so that our real information can't be tracked back to us.

Of course, this might raise suspicions and land us in Guantanamo as a enemy combatant.

ADVISE and Consent

According to the Christian Science Monitor, from late 2004 until mid-2006, a little-known data-mining computer system developed by the US Department of Homeland Security to hunt terrorists, weapons of mass destruction, and biological weapons sifted through Americans' personal data with little regard for federal privacy laws.

Now the $42 million cutting-edge system, designed to process trillions of pieces of data, has been halted and could be canceled pending data-privacy reviews, according to a newly released report to Congress by the DHS's own internal watchdog.

Data mining to help fight the war on terror has become an accepted, even mandated, method to provide timely security information. The DHS operates at least a dozen such programs; intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense employ many others.

But ADVISE (Analy­sis, Dissemina­tion, Visu­ali­zation, Insight and Semantic Enhance­ment) was special. An electronic omnivore conceived in 2003, it was designed to ingest information from scores of databases, blogs, e-mail traffic, intelligence reports, and other sources, government documents and researchers say.

Sifting that enormous mass at lightning speed, ADVISE was to display data patterns visually as "semantic graphs" – a sort of illuminated information constellation – in which an analyst's eye could spot links between people, places, events, travel, calls, and organizations worldwide.

In searching for terrorists, data-mining programs are supposed to ensure that Americans' personal information is used only when necessary and lawful – and only for specific and proper uses. One problem is that even data that look anonymous aren't necessarily so. For instance, even when names and Social Security numbers are stripped from data files, programmers can still identify 87 percent of Americans through their date of birth, gender, and five-digit Zip Code, researchers say. So a system has to be carefully designed and use encryption and other computer techniques to comply with the law.

Last week the Pentagon shut down its TALON terrorism database program, which had been found to hold files on peace activists. In 2003, another military data-mining project – the Total Information Awareness project – was also ended following a congressional uproar over privacy fears.