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

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.

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.

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.

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:)

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.

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.

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.