The Pentagon Wants Your Secrets

Teknogeek was one of the many readers to point out today's New York Times report on what one submitter dubbed "Son of Carnivore." "This should scare you: Vice Admiral John Poindexter wants to create a supercomputer capable of hunting through electronic databases all over the world, looking for suspected terrorists. According to the article, Poindexter outlines a need to '"break down the stovepipes' that separate commercial and government databases, allowing teams of intelligence analysts to hunt for hidden patterns of activity with powerful computers.'" Update: 11/10 16:15 GMT by T : Here's an updated link to the (no-registration) Arizona Star. Update: 11/24 17:42 GMT by T : Thanks to expiring links, here's another updated link to the NYTimes story.

Comments

IS it a two way deal

[Anonymous Coward]

"break down the stovepipes' that separate commercial and government databases, allowing teams of intelligence analysts to hunt for hidden patterns of activity with powerful computers.'"

I think they probably mean all your data belong to us.

I doubt it would be a two way deal allowing teams of private "intelligence analysts" to search the governments databases.

I'd like to watch a thousand cable channels...

[Istealmymusic]

...but there's nothing on. And my high-speed connection's monitored daily by the Pentagon.

-- Bad Religion, The Defense

Bad Religion knew it all along. Listen to Bad Religion, and you'll be able to predict Slashdot's next article. Good luck, and may the force be with you.

Poindexter?

[AndreAtlan]

wasnt this guy guilty in Iran-Contra?

Imagine

[Muggins the Mad]

Just think how much fun this would have been had it been possible during the commie hunting McCarthy era?

I'm wondering if the US is about to enter another one, except with "terrorists" instead of "commies".

With modern information databases, that can get very very scary indeed.

- Muggins the Mad

Re:Imagine

[ajakk]

the fact that we let dictators and multinationals run roughshod over the rights of the poor of other countries without doing anything to help achieve real justice

So we should be invading Iraq so we can stop a dictator from running roughshod other the rights of the poor of his country?

THe comparison to Germany is not appropriate. Unlike Poland, Iraq has agreed to a UN resolution that said they would unilatteraly disarm. Did they? No. So we have waited around for 10 years waiting for Iraq to live up to their agreements. How much longer should we wait around? Long enough for him to develop the weapons of mass destruction that he is legally bound to not possess.

If you think that we should not invade Iraq or not get the United Nations to unanomously agree to tell them they have one last chance to follow the UN resolutions, what should we do? I have heard many on the Left decry that the US is going alone, and now that the UN has passed a resolution, that the US controls the UN. I have yet hear what a comprehensive solution as to what should be done.

Re:Imagine

[sallen]

I'm not sure that's completely relavent. I wasn't following foreign policy very closely at the time, but i doubt Iraq entered into any cease-fires because they felt like it. If we are going to insist on writing whatever self-serving* rules we want, people will probably agree to play by them as long as we hold a gun to their head, but not much longer. We can come back with the gun 10 years later, but i think we'd be better off coming up with a set of rules that everybody agrees with.

It was a war. They lost big time. The cease fire isn't meant to come up with terms they both agree to, it's to come up with terms the world (it was UN decision) could live with vs. continuing to pummel Iraq and terms Iraq would agree to to keep from continuing to be pummeled. Iraq agreed with them, period. The lack of a cease fire would have simply meant Iraq would have had to completely and unilaterally surrender (which would have been preferable, IMHO). I really didn't see any need for this new UN stuff, they violated the cease fire.. as far as I'm concerned that means the 'war' from '91 was still on.

That being said, I don't think Poindexter belongs anywhere NEAR the government or holding any position within it. Period. Iran Contra should have sealed his fate. And this idea only seems to continue to highlight that he doesn't understand the military serves the civilian population. That's the reason the military is permitted no operational capabilities in the U.S. except under rare rare rare circumstances. And it should stay that way.

Is this the same Poindexter that..

[GreyWolf3000]

..claimed that he was just doing the President's bidding at any cost during the hearings on the Iran-contra conflict?

I saw parts of this guy's testimony on Bill Moyers (yes, I watch PBS). Sounded like a total and complete criminal, especially with Bill Moyers' unforgiving yet true commentary.

Checks and Balances?

[Alethes]

What are the odds that the Supreme Court would also let this go through if the other two branches managed to slide it through somehow? I don't know the answer, and I'm not naive enough to believe that it would be shot down with 100% guarantee, but I do believe that there are enough angles with which to attack this type of legislation that it would be very hard to have a package that matched up the Poindexter's liking.

Incidentally, any attempt to turn this into a some kind of anti-Republican rant will be easily refuted with the long list of politicians on BOTH sides of the aisle who favor a stronger government and weaker individual liberties.

Under The Watchful Eye

[jodo]

Ponder Poindexter's world here. The logo is red meat for the conspiracy guys. Lots of interesting programs too.

Re:what's so bad about this?

[Centinel]

here on slashdot, the pinko sympathizers will make some excuses for why this is a bad idea, but I believe their motives are only in bashing the great nation in the world.

So, if you are willing to stand up for the Bill of Rights--the 4th Amendment in this case--that makes you a pinko sympathizer?

People like you represent the rule of men, not the rule of law. I bet you couldn't even paraphrase the Bill of Rights in glowing generalities, let alone verbatim, and I would wager you've never even bothered to read the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers.

Re:Poindexter is no Poindexter

[Anonymous Coward]

I tend not to agree with the point of view which sees everything in terms of absolutes: either you are free or you are a slave; either you have privacy or you haven't, etc.

The information in question is already out there, in the hands of corporations, which have less admirable motives than preventing terrorism, and are not under democratic control.

Surely there are already people who are suspected of X who have not done X. The important thing is that they cannot be prosecuted on mere suspicions.

What are the specific objections you have to such a database? If your argument is merely that a society without this particular database is free, while one with it is not, I don't think the point is debatable, because such view is based on emotional hysteria and not reason.

darpa.mil/iao

[phyxeld]

I knew that name sounded familiar... Oh, thats it! He's the director of the I.A.O., or Information Awareness Office, the agency with the scariest name/logo combination in the entire pentagon! (shouldn't the be a link to the IAO along with this story? *ahem* update:)

Re:Alert: INCOMPLETE ARTICLE!

[elmegil]

Good. It's about time that real media started paying attention to this. Want to scare yourself silly? Check out the details of what Poindexter is working on at http://www.darpa.mil/iao/ (see link in my sig).

Almost

[dachshund]

One of the sad ironies here is that poindexter was a convicted felon. (later pardoned I believe)

In testimony before Congress, Poindexter took full responsibility for arranging the arms-for-hostages-and-funding-of-Rebels transactions that made up the core of the Iran Contra Affair. He also admitted that he had withheld information and outright lied to Congress in the past, and displayed no particular remorse for his actions.

He's free today because he was granted immunity for his testimony. Prosecutors tried and convicted him anyway, but he managed to have the conviction reversed upon appeal based on this immunity agreement.

I don't wish to libel the distinguished gentelman, so I'll phrase this delicately. Many people are of the opinion that Mr. Poindexter occupies a government office today solely because he demonstrated intense loyalty to President Reagan, essentially falling on his sword and lying to protect the President from being implicated. Although other individuals involved in the Scandal testified that they had notified the President of their activities, Poindexter contradicted them all. In his testimony, Poindexter claimed that he'd initiated those actions to give the President deniability (although why the President would need deniability for actions he didn't authorize struck many as unusual.) That such an extremely disciplined military man would take it upon himself to arrange these actions without the President's approval is almost beyond belief. But with noone to counter Poindexter's testimony, the President avoided impeachment, a fact that most certainly wasn't forgotten in certain circles.

So this is the man who now occupies this extremely sensitive position, and is essentially building the most sophisticated surveillance network ever unleashed upon the people of the United States.

another approach

[agurkan]

There are many things wrong with this approach.

First, it is impossible to go through databases without risking damaging somebody's piravicy. Second, it is very hard if not impossible to catch up with the expansion of information available electronically. Third, and maybe most important, this doesn't solve the problem.

The solution to terorism is not hunting terorists down. It should be done of course, but more resources should be allocated to remove the fundamental reasons why people become terorists, why they become pawns of other people. You cannot get rid of malaria just by vaccinating people, you have to dry the swamp. But, again, of course, vaccination should continue in the meanwhile. I just don't think it logical not to spend any resources on swamp drying, while so much money goes to smart bombs etc.

new legislation proposed?

[twitter]

To deploy such a system, known as Total Information Awareness, new legislation would be needed, some of which has been proposed by the Bush administration in the Homeland Security Act now before Congress. That legislation would amend the Privacy Act of 1974, which was intended to limit what government agencies could do with private information.

Privacy act, my ass. The new legislation required is a repeal or negation of the fouth amendment. There are many good reasons the government must obtain a warrent by presenting reasonable evidence of wrongdoing in a public court to be able to search your personal effects and property. The FBI just had two agents busted for manipulating stock prices with information they obtained "terrorist hunting." Am I now going to believe that Uncle Sam will keep all my data confidential when any old clerk can get at it thanks to these broken "stove pipes"? There's not supposed to be ANY connection between my information or my company's information and the governement. Yet here's this bozo saying "All your base are belong to Uncle Sam". Chalk one more up for the errosion of the bill of rights. People without rights, who are stripped of the fruits of their labor (think income taxes) are also known as slaves.

Folks like Poindexter make me worry that my own government might actually set off a few small nukes to get their way. George Orwell predicted nuclear and civil wars would bring on the hyseria to build his nightmare society. Where is the conclusive proof indicating exactly who was responsible for September 11th? Why have we not seen it all presented and well documented? I'm getting sick of "security reasons" being used as an excuse for people to do whatever they want with out accountability. I don't care if that idiot, Ossoma Bin Laden, was happy to claim guilt. There must have been 1,000 others happy to do the same. I want public proof and the guilty punnished, not scape goats, censorship and loss of rights.

"Lack of Info" vs "Incompetence"

[pumpknhd]

The intelligence failure that occured last year was not due to lack of information. On the contrary, there was too much information--so much that they couldn't sift through the "noise". Having the ability to look and spy into normal people's data will only add to that noise. If the government can't sift through the amount of information they already have, how can they handle that much more?

there's suprises then stuff that isn't surprising

[zogger]

"They already exist. Financial institutions already are required to run their databases against the Office of Foriegn Asset Control's list of Specially Designated Nationals and groups, using soundex to look for aliases."

Uhh, that's cool. really. You do this all the time huh, and it's all on the up and up? cool. would you please to reveal the actual for-real names and addys of the people who knew about 9-11 ahead of time enough to put in all those "put options"? Ya know, one of those stories the mass media just seems to love to forget about and act like it never happened. The "magic bullet" of 9-11. Whoops, so sorry, I forgot we are supposed to forget that little detail. Oh what's that you say? Oh, the owner of the brokerage where the bulk of the puts were placed is the ex-#2 guy at the CIA? wow, whut_a_coincidence, I'm sure. Oh ya, excuse me, I thought we were looking for the al queda "terrorists" financiers and assorted hangers on. Connected fatcat western white guys in suits with titles don't count, do they? In fact, letting the cat outta the bag that they had a hand in it for a seriously dangerous political agenda, but got a little greedy and they thought they could slide by and skim a little off the top might be considered a "bad idea", correct? OK-We'll just forget about it then, it's just an embarrasing little incident. Nothing to see here now, move along.....

A question of trust.

[Sergeant Beavis]

Why should a people trust their government if their government does not trust them? I am a pretty conservative person politically speaking but I am also a defender of liberty. The founding fathers didn't trust one another, that is why they created such a complicated system of checks and balances in our Constitution. Allowing any part of our government to have such power will most certainly corrupt it (yea, I know it's corrupt already). There is to much potential for abuse here. Even if we were to trust the current administration (and I understand that many of you do not) it does not hold that the next administration will not abuse such power. Nixon has an enemies list. Clinton had FBI information on Republicans in the White House. Who knows what else has been done that we just don't know about.

We want to interview Vice Adm. John Poindexter!

[Geopoliticus]

Hey Taco and Cowboy, you should see if we could get a question and answer with Mr. Poindexter. It says in the article that he declines interviews, let's be the first!

I want to know what this cold war security advisor has to say for himself...

I'm getting out the ol' paper and pen to write this man.

Fairly easy to implement

[bytesmythe]

I used to work at a company that was involved in customer data mining. During orientation, they have someone come out whose job it is to convince all the new employees that the company is not evil and is providing a valuable service.

See, everyone in the room is freaked out when they learn the company has over 300 pieces of data (including things like name, SSN, birth date, address, marital status, kids, cars, salary, credit history, home value, pets, etc.) on over 150 million people in the United States. I watched a room full of people all look at each other with a slight amount of fear and uncertainty in their eyes. Then out came the propaganda machine to try to set us at ease.

Now, current law prohibits this company from using marketing data in any kind of legal procedings, but that could easily change. The company uses extremely complex algorithms to consolidate data from different sources (which source for birthdate should we believe? how about home value?) into a single record. Client companies (such as stores, banks, etc.) can then take their own customer databases and match them up with the huge store of information that my former employer could provide.

The government could easily have major companies (like banks, car dealers, mortgage companies, grocery stores, gas stations, utility companies, etc.) tie their customer databases to the "master" database my ex-company provided. Tracking the daily activities of almost any given individual from that point would be depressingly simple.

Just thought I should warn you.

By the way, last I heard when I was still working there, that company is the only consumer data tracking company allowed to combine disparate data sources into a single "view" of an individual. Normally datamining companies are legally barred from doing this. If they get a data element from a particular source, then they must sell ALL the data elements from that source together. The place I worked at began the process before the law took effect, so the company was grandfathered in, so they can take income from one place, name and SSN from another, address from yet another, etc.

Be afraid.

Facing history

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what it's more disturbing, the fact the military is going to spy on the domestic population or the frivilous attitude of posters to this dangerous development.

Since the September 11 attacks, our government has been intent on rapidly erasing nearly 250 years of freedom and democracy in the name of public safety, a reason often used throughout history to justify widescale imprisonment and murder and other human rights abuses.

The Bill of Rights does not prevent law enforcement from doing their job. The Bill of Rights prevents them from overstepping their boundaries while doing their job. No one can feel safe once these fragile rights are lost.

It's naive to believe that just because you haven't done anything illegal that this system is harmless simply because the definition of what is illegal can rapidly change. The books that you check out the library today may not be banned, but in the future they may be considered highly subversive. Once the collection of individual data become widespread and systematic, your data history can easily be reviewed, interpreted, and evaluated according the current regime's needs, desires, and whim.

You can lose everything in a very short time. The people of Nazi Germany were not all brainwashed by Hitler. A great deal of them had serious misgivings about what was happening, but by the time the gravity of the situation became clear, they were already trapped. Rights erosion is slow at first, but the growth is exponential.

Already I feel an early warning of fear, I've read too much history and psychology to be optimistic about the current situation. Populations are very predictible and manipulatable, especially in times of crisis.

I hope I'm wrong.

For further information, you may want to read Wilhelm Reich's "The Mass Psychology of Fascism".

Re:Yes, it's the Iran/Contra Poindexter

[Mac Degger]

Jesus. You people know your governemnt to be corrupt, and you're still not out marching? Wow.