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FBI Data Mining For More Than Just Terrorists
jcatcw writes "Computerworld reports that the FBI is using data mining programs to track more than just terrorists. The program's original focus was to identify potential terrorists, but additional patterns have been developed for identity theft rings, fraudulent housing transactions, Internet pharmacy fraud, automobile insurance fraud, and health-care-related fraud. From the article: 'In a statement, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the report [on the data mining] was four months late and raised more questions than it answered. The report "demonstrates just how dramatically the Bush administration has expanded the use of [data mining] technology, often in secret, to collect and sift through Americans' most sensitive personal information," he said. At the same time, the report provides an "important and all-too-rare ray of sunshine on the department's data mining activities," Leahy said. It would give Congress a way to conduct "meaningful oversight" he said.'"
Computerworld reports that the FBI is using data mining programs to track more than just terrorists.
Is this really a shock to anyone?
This was just on SlashDot yesterday: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/11/23 24211
Do you even bother to look at the site, you know, just to check that the story hasn't been posted already?
I mean, c'mon... it's not like you're doing any real work.
Maybe Slashdot editors should take up data mining (aka, actually reading the site).
How we know is more important than what we know.
By that logic, it's ok for police officers to break into your house or car in order to see if there's anything illegal inside.
No, but it's OK for them to look through your car's window. Or listen for rape screams on their route. This is what they are doing here in the digital world out there. There is no break-in done during spying on you, you don't notice it and don't even know it.
No, it isn't admissible in court, but it does give them a good idea of where to direct their limited resources for legal evidence collection.
And this is wrong how, exactly? As long as they are not out to get you personally (and they are not, RTFA), there is nothing wrong in looking for generic signs of a crime among the public, then directing their legal attention to the troubled area and looking for real.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Government conducting "meaningful oversight" over government? Oh boy, I feel safe now.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
"Surprise, surprise surprise!"
I mean seriously, did anyone think otherwise? Let's see... You've got at your disposal a giant database of every person in the country, their financial activities, their social security numbers, their purchases, their personal tastes, their locations, their income, their interests, their criminal records, their political leanings, their emails, IMs, personal communications, and most importantly their RELATIONSHIPS-- who they call, who their family is, where they travel, etc.
Amazon and lastfm use this kind of thing to figure what kind of music you're likely to like and/or what items you're gonna be most interested in. Do you really think with all this tasty information the government isn't going to use it for ALL KINDS of purposes?
They'll be able to do searches using probability and relationships to identify all kinds of commonalities between "undesirables"... who knows what it might be that puts you on the wrong list... maybe you share the same taste in "music PLUS shoes size PLUS income PLUS you leave too close to a mosque" and BAM, you light up as a 97% potential political dissident. Oh, and look, you're having an affair too. How convenient.
This shit is scary. I'm not surprised they're using this information for domestic crimes (which of course they're not allowed to do, not that it could possibly be admissible. How could a court accept evidence from a nationally secretive/illegal spying program? That is, unless they're getting tips from anonymous gov't sources that never show up in a courtroom...).
I AM worried about what else they're using it for (breaking up political adversaries, busting government bids, economic manipulations, blackmail, etc.) that we won't find out about for 50 years, if at all.
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Who wants to bet that political dissident groups are being monitored through this program? I mean, it kind of goes without saying, since their primary domestic target is environmental activists. The FBI and the US government in general has a long history of using ostensibly crime-focused programs to infiltrate and neutralize political enemies (see the American Indian Movement [and Leonard Peltier], Martin Luther King Jr., United Slaves, the Black Panthers [and Mark Clark, Fred Hampton, Bunchy Carter, John Huggins, Alex Rackley, H Rap Brown, Geronimo Pratt], the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Black Liberation Army, groups struggling for Puerto Rican independence, Students for a Democratic Society, Earth First! [and Judi Bari], various militia groups, even church peace groups and smaller political parties like the various socialists. Not to mention nonaligned activists like individual environmentalists who've been set up or entrapped in recent years.
For those who don't know, COINTELPRO (counter-intelligence program) was an FBI initiative targeting American citizens engaged in "objectionable" political activity. Instead of arresting and prosecuting criminals, this secret and illegal program sought to neutralize targets by:
- creating a culture of fear and paranoia (psychological warfare) through whispering campaigns, surveillance, illegal search, seizure and entry;
- infiltration, provocation and entrapment;
- legal harassment (such as repeatedly arresting leaders of targeted organizations for minor infractions, keeping them behind bars while they awaited a hearing or scrambled to make bail; also including falsified show trials such as the "tennis court murders", where Pratt was convicted of murders that were committed while he was, according the FBI's own surveillance records, 400 miles away);
- violence and murder (notably the murder of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark).
While the COINTELPRO moniker has been disbanded, its methods extend into FBI practices to this day.
Apparently you missed this article on Tuesday...
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
And if you're a female stupid enough to wear a skirt, guys should be able to look right up it, yes? Because it is easy? Even if the female in question has something tucked up there she'd rather guys not see? Wait, you think she has some kind of right to privacy? Why? What if she's got some shoplifted stuff in there? Doesn't that give us the right to look up everybody's skirt?
Invasion of privacy is the crossing of socially defined boundaries, not just hardened boundaries like those that incorporate walls, encryption, or locks. Those hardening implementations are just the same boundary, with less trust. In other words, if I don't encrypt my hard drive, I'm not inviting you onto it. The boundary is still there. If I do encrypt the hard drive, I'm still not inviting you onto it, but I've taken the step that if you are such an ass-choad that you go there anyway, I've made it more difficult. This is because some people have made it somewhat prudent to drop the trust thing that goes along with social boundaries.
In some small towns, people don't find it necessary to lock doors - cars, houses - because they know that their neighbors won't cross the social boundary. In LA, on the other hand, they know the neighbors will cross it, and so trust is sundered, and locks go in and are used. This is not a good thing and robbery of an unlocked home is not a consequence of stupidity on the part of the homeowner, it is a consequence of social retardation on the part of the thief.
When you say it is OK for the feds to jump onto people's information that they in no way intended to share with anyone, you are explicitly sanctioning the lack of a social boundary that protects those things you do not intend to share. You might as well lie down in the gutter right now and commence staring up the ladies skirts. After all, if they didn't want you to look, they'd have worn pants, right?
Privacy, liberty, honor, grace - look into all these things. They actually have good, solid reasons to exist, and it is a terrible thing when the government - or anyone else - erodes them. When it is done as a matter of course, it is not only terrible, it is despicable.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Expecting the Democrats to pull away powers from FBI aftersuch blatant abuse will NOT happen.
There will be a huge cry, brownie points scoring, a few low-levels at FBI who were unfortunate enough to track their ex-spouses will be fired...but seriously this concentration of power in Executive will continue.
The Democrats are not willing to seriously bring the constitution back to balance, because when their Dem (and dumb) president takes charge in 2008 they need that power.
Good or Bad, Bush and Cheney showed the way to the nomads Democrats that Executive Privilege is something you can use and abuse at will.
Once elected, a president never needs to worry about popularity contest since he will never be unseated except when he gets a Monica...
If the dems were really serious about the welfare of soldiers and countrymen, they would have raised a BIG cry in newspapers about kicking cheney out of office first and would have brought and failed maybe atleast 3 impeachment resolutions now.
Bush has acknowledged that Plame's cover was blown by someone in his admin. We know who did that.
So explain why dems are hemming and slowing down...
The next decade will see more of power thrust in hands of a president who is unwise and unfit to wield them.
Ron Paul was right in questioning the right things: Unfortunately the press has frozen him out since he questions their profits ultimately.
If the Dems were serious about fellow citizens they would have done the following by now:
1. Passed a law forcing Free Medicare and state-subsidized medical insurance like MA has done.
2. Voted to impeach Cheney over abuse of power and leaking the identity of agent.
3. Censured Bush for commuting the sentence of Scooter Libby.
4. Refused to pass any funding which will help the war and bring the Govt to a screeching halt: same like the republicans did in 1990s to Clinton (even though he balanced the budget).
5. Talk tough just like Bush and state publicly that this president is violating the people's trust and misleading them.
6. Drag Colin Powell to a Subpoena and ask him to explain under oath to the senate why he recommended war and who twisted intelligence.
7. Order the Wash DC mayor to arrest and produce aides of president who refused to obey a subpoena instead of going to courts.
8. Reopen the 9-11 commission to discuss discrepancies.
9. Censure NSA and pass a law prohibint it from listening to US citizens anywhere in the World.
10. Pass a law that preserves liberty and prevents the FBI from issuing gag orders to libraries.
Am betting $1,000 (which will be donated to ACLU if i fail) that the dems will do absolutely none of the steps described above, or even remotely challenge Bush or Cheney.
These Dems are puss!es of the first order and am waiting to see a Republican President reelected thus pushing the dems further into obscurity for failing us.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
But which title in the referenced postings makes it more clear as to what is going on?
1) "Data on Americans mined for terror risk" - Yahoo (AT&T, SBC...etc)
or
2) "FBI data mining programs target more than just terrorists, DOJ says" - ComputerWorld
Which headline attracts your attention and makes you want to read it?
Would suppliers of government information (AT&T running to give our phone records to government), have any interest in "burying" minor details from the phone information they regularly "give" (Sell -- may not be money, but they get payback, believe it) to the FBI? Would such an information provider have a vested interest in having Americans not probe too deeply at the lies that were told about the information "only being used to fight the War on Terror"? Did anyone really believed it would stop at that? Welcome to the evolving police state. Will we fall as low as the citizens in the USSR before the wall came down. We going to be like East Germany where 1 in 7 were "spies" for their secret police (isn't that sorta how the FBI is operating)? How low will Americans sink before they stand up and retake the government?
Any "ill-gotten" information gotten by the FBI (or any government agency) should invalidate any evidence obtained as a result of that information. Victims and their property should be held harmless from from government retaliation, enforcement or confiscation.
Anything short of these protections will entice the FBI to hold onto the info to use in future investigations when they need some more easy arrests or property to confiscate.
New police overlord-wanna-be's motto: "To Punish and Enslave" (via arbitrary and increasingly severe law prosecution with long sentences where the prisoners must perform work for private companies or the government). Oh, prisoners don't have rights? Isn't that convenient.
Congratulations. You have entirely missed the point. Of course it makes sense to harden, especially in the face of a known threat, and the more substantial the threat, the harder you want to go. But the point is that the OP's "not having a problem" with the government's crossing an unhardened boundary is shortsighted in the extreme; fine, lock your door, encrypt your drive and so forth, but in the meantime, there is no need to be saying "if your door is unlocked, it's OK for robbers to come in." Just because I send an email in the clear, I'm in no way saying that it is OK for people to read the content therein; just because my hard drive isn't encrypted, I'm not saying you can come in and examine the content of the drive. It isn't OK at all.
Frankly, the government has no legitimate tasking to be looking at any communication or data of a US citizen unless they have probable cause a crime has been committed by the specific person or person(s) they are looking at. The 4th amendment is very, very clear on this, and the government is flat out wrong to invade citizen's communications. They're supposed to be working for us. We're not their subjects; we're not their slaves; we're not suspects unless something very specific happens. Does the following seem familiar?
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
There's no clause there that says "unless George Bush thinks its a good idea" or "unless J Edgar Hoover found you were of a political persuasion he didn't like" or "as long as you encipher you writings" or "except if if you don't lock your door" or "if we can scare the public sufficiently about A-rabs" and so on and so forth. No searching without probable cause and a warrant. That's clear as a bell. And what are they doing? What is data, email, hard drive mining, after all? It's searching your info that you did not give permission to search, that's what it is — and furthermore, it has been understood for literally hundreds of years in this very country that your personal papers and communications are private unless you say otherwise.
The government is out of hand here. They are criminal; they are breaking the law, literally the highest law in the land. These are high crimes indeed. These boundaries are well established and any serious attempt to argue them away — I'm not talking about debate here, but intent or action(s) to destroy the boundaries themselves — just establishes the person or persons making the argument as a sophist and an enemy of liberty. A toxic citizen, or worse. There is only one legitimate way to approach this, and that is by changing the constitution; and they've not done that, so they have absolutely nowhere legitimate to stand.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.