Bush May Have Continued to Secretly Operate John Poindexter's TIA Program

[Joanne98]

The Public Record
July 16th, 2009

Total information awarness. Back in 2001, the Defense Department was briefed about a massive data mining system that officials said was aimed at identifying alleged terrorists who lived and communicated with people in the United States.

The new intelligence program granted traditional law enforcement agencies as well as the FBI and the CIA the authority to conduct what was then referred to as "suspicionless surveillance" of American citizens.

"Suspicionless Surveillance" was developed by the Pentagon's controversial Total Information Awareness department, led by Admiral John Poindexter, the former national security adviser who secretly sold weapons to Middle Eastern terrorists in 1980s during the Iran-Contra affair and was convicted of a felony for lying to Congress and destroying evidence. The convictions were later overturned on appeal.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, had referred to Poindexter "the architect of a program to extend surveillance of private databases."

Rotenberg said Poindexter was involved in a 1984 policy directive criticized by civil liberties groups and lawmakers who said it would hand the National Security Agency control over privately held information. The directive was voided with the passage of the 1987 Computer Security Act.

But in October 2001, Poindexter resurrected his government operated data-mining proposals. It was then that he introduced TIA to the Department of Defense, around the time Bush had signed an executive order authorizing domestic surveillance under a program known as the President's Surveillance Program, according to a report issued last week by government watchdogs.

In the summer of 2002, a public outcry over the revelation that JetBlue Airways turned over the names and addresses of 1.5 million passengers to the Pentagon so the agency could create a database about Americans' travel patterns, and also authorized the agency to monitor credit card transactions, led Congress to withhold tens of millions of dollars in funding for the project in early 2003.

But the program would have been able to continue to operate if President Bush believed that dismantling it would endanger national security, which former NSA officials familiar with the program said was the case.

The "suspicionless surveillance" program was somewhat different from the warrantless wiretaps President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to conduct after 9/11. "Suspicionless surveillance" "" unveiled in a Pentagon press release in 2002 "" was broader in scope: it gave law enforcement the authority to mine commercial and other private data on American citizens, listening in on phone calls, monitoring emails, inspecting credit-card and bank transactions of thousands of individuals on the off-chance that one might be a terrorist "" and all without any judicial oversight.

During a hearing before the House Intelligence Committee in April 2003, Kate Martin of the Center for National Security Studies, said, "There are two fundamentally different approaches that can be used to identify and locate dangerous individuals in the United States and their sources of financing.

"The approach, which has generated the most discussion, interest, and, apparently, resources is different forms of data-mining: the "suspicionless surveillance' of large groups of people, whether through linking computerized databases, programs like Total Information Awareness, pattern analysis, the creation of a "terrorist profile,' or surveillance of an entire group."

But protests by civil liberty and privacy groups, as well as apprehension by Republican and Democratic lawmakers over what amounted to domestic spying, led Congress to shut down the surveillance program in 2003.

It now appears that shortly after Congress told the White House it was trampling on individual privacy rights with its "suspicionless surveillance," several current and former NSA officials said in interviews, President Bush continued to secretly authorize the program.

Poindexter said in a resignation letter in September 2003 that his goal in developing the program was to identify "patterns of transactions that are indicative of terrorist planning and preparations."

"We never contemplated spying and saving data on Americans," Poindexter wrote in his resignation letter.


1 | 2 | 3

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Bush-May-Have-Continued-to-by-Jason-Leopold-090716-973.html

[Rosa Luxemburg]

1. The Poindexter of the Iran Contra affair?

[Lasher]

3. Yes, the same one.

This is one price we're still paying because we didn't fully investigate Iran/Contra and put the perpetrators away.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

5. strange how 'those technicalities' suddenly appear in these convictions

he should have been with many others behind bars

[Lasher]

6. Same way Oliver North got away with it.

Then the traitor was paraded around by right wingers as some kind of hero.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

8. It's sickening that Bush employed all these crooks

[santamargarita]

14. Bush didn't want to be the only crook in the room

:bluebox:

[Lasher]

2. I have no doubt of it.

No doubt whatever.

[KansDem]

4. So, with all these super-secret spying and intel operations going on...

Just how did 19 attackers, 15 from a country whose rulers are friends and business partners of the Bush Family and 2 from a country with ties to Cheney's Halliburton, evade detection and hijack 4 airliners to murder 3,000 Americans?

I'm flummoxed! :shrug:

[Enthusiast]

9. Flummoxed indeed.

They didn't evade detection. They didn't evade detection at all. That is the only reasonable conclusion.

[KansDem]

13. That would explain why Bush sat and did nothing on 9/11 when told we were under attack

There was nothing for him to do! It was already being done...


(I originally posted this in the wrong place but was out of the editing time when I discovered it...)

[KansDem]

12. That would explain why Bush sat and did nothing on 9/11 when told we were under attack

There was nothing for him to do! It was already being done...

[notadmblnd]

7. this lets us know who was hacking corporate databases

there was a time that it seemed like every day some corporation was reporting that their databases had been hacked and the information stolen.

[IndianaGreen]

10. Is this program still operational?

And if so, why is it still operational?

[defendandprotect]

11. K&R -- back later

[Politicalboi]

15. Somebody should wiretap Bush

[Wednesdays]

16. K&R

:kick:

[leveymg]

17. Here's more on one of the programs that followed TIA: Matrix, a terrorism profiling system

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/20/terror/main618662.shtml

NEW YORK, May 20, 2004
Privacy Backers Eye Matrix's Power
Precursor Of Felon Database Project Gave Feds 120,000 Suspects

(AP) Before helping to launch the criminal information project known as Matrix, a database contractor gave U.S. and Florida authorities the names of 120,000 people who showed a statistical likelihood of being terrorists — sparking some investigations and arrests.

The "high terrorism factor" scoring system also became a key selling point for the involvement of the database company, Seisint Inc., in the Matrix project.

Public records obtained by The Associated Press from several states show that Justice Department officials cited the scoring technology in appointing Seisint sole contractor on the federally funded, $12 million project.

Seisint and the law enforcement officials who oversee Matrix insist that the terrorism scoring system ultimately was kept out of the project, largely because of privacy concerns.

However, new details about Seisint's development of the "terrorism quotient," including the revelation that authorities apparently acted on the list of 120,000, are renewing privacy activists' suspicions about Matrix's potential power.

"Assuming they have in fact abandoned the terrorist quotient, there's nothing that stops them from bringing it back," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union, which learned about the list of 120,000 through its own records request in Utah.

Matrix — short for Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange — combines state records and data culled by Seisint to give investigators fast access to information on crime and terrorism suspects. It was launched in 2002.

Because the system includes information on innocent people as well as known criminals, Matrix has drawn objections from liberal and conservative privacy groups. Utah and at least eight other states have pulled out, leaving Florida, Connecticut, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

The AP has received thousands of pages of Matrix documents in records requests this year, including meeting minutes and presentation materials that discuss the project in detail.

Not one indicates that Matrix planners decided against using the statistical method of determining an individual's propensity for terrorism.

When the AP specifically requested documents indicating the scoring system was scrapped, the general counsel's office for Florida state police said it could not uncover any.

Even so, people involved with Matrix pledge that the statistical method was removed from the final product.

"I'll put my 26 years of law enforcement experience on the line. It is not in there," said Mark Zadra, chief investigator for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

He said Matrix, which has 4 billion records, merely speeds access to material that police have always been able to get from disparate sources, and does not automatically or proactively finger suspects.

Bill Shrewsbury, a Seisint executive and former federal drug agent, said the terrorism scoring algorithm that produced the list of 120,000 names was "put on the shelf" after it was demonstrated immediately following Sept. 11, 2001.

He said the scoring system requires intelligence data that was fed into the software for the initial demonstration but is not commonly available. "Nor are we interested in pursuing that," he said.

The Utah documents included a Seisint presentation saying the scoring system was developed by the company and law enforcement officials by reverse engineering an unnamed "Terrorist Handbook" that reveals how terrorists "penetrate and live in our society."

The scoring incorporated such factors as age, gender, ethnicity, credit history, "investigational data," information about pilot and driver licenses, and connections to "dirty" addresses known to have been used by other suspects.

According to Seisint's presentation, dated January 2003 and marked confidential, the 120,000 names with the highest scores were given to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, FBI, Secret Service and Florida state police. (Later, those agencies would help craft the software that queries Matrix.)

Of the people with the 80 highest scores, five were among the Sept. 11 hijackers, Seisint's presentation said. Forty-five were identified as being or possibly being under existing investigations, while 30 others "were unknown to FBI."

"Investigations were triggered and arrests were made by INS and other agencies," the presentation added. Two bullet points stated: "Several arrests within one week" and "Scores of other arrests." It does not provide details of when and where the investigations and arrests occurred.

Phil Ramer, who heads Florida state police's intelligence division, said his agency found the list a useful starting point for some investigations, though he said he could not recall how many. He stressed that the list was not used as the sole evidence to make arrests.

"What we did with the list is we went back and found out how they got on the list," Ramer said.

Dean Boyd, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a descendant of INS in the Department of Homeland Security, said he could not confirm that INS used or was given the list.

Although Seisint says it shelved the scoring system — known as high terrorist factor, or HTF — after the original demonstrations in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, the algorithm was touted well into 2003.

A records request by the AP in Florida turned up "briefing points," dated January 2003, for a presentation on Matrix to Vice President Dick Cheney and other top federal officials delivered jointly by Seisint, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida's top police official.

One of the items on Seisint's agenda: "Demonstrate HTF with mapping." Matrix meeting minutes from February 2003 say Cheney was briefed along with Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and FBI Director Robert Mueller.

In May 2003, the Justice Department approved Seisint as sole data contractor on the project, citing the company's "technical qualifications," including software "applying the `terrorism quotient' in all cases."

"The quotient identifies a set of criteria which accurately singled out characteristics related to the perpetrators of the 9-11 attacks and other terrorist events," said a memo from an Office of Justice Programs policy adviser, Bruce Edwards. "This process produced a scoring mechanism (that), when applied to the general criminal population, yields other people that may have similar motives."

A spokeswoman for the Office of Justice Programs declined to comment.

Ramer, the Florida agent, said the scoring system was scrapped because it was "really specific to 9/11," and not applicable for everyday use. Also, he said, "we didn't want anybody abusing it."

Seisint Inc., is a Boca Raton, Fla., company founded by a millionaire, Hank Asher, who stepped down from its board of directors last year after revelations of past ties to drug smugglers.

[leveymg]

19. ACLU: "Matrix" Terror Profiling System Shared Data on 90 percent of Americans with CIA/NSA

http://acluutah.org/matrix.htm

Stephanie Peterson, Safe and Free advocate for the ACLU of Utah said, “Our concern about MATRIX is similar in many ways to our concerns about sections of the USA PATRIOT Act and raise the same issues among privacy advocates. Both programs make personal and financial information easily available for use by law enforcement that go beyond combating terrorism. They are based on the flawed and dangerous intelligence idea that to catch terrorists, the government needs to spy on people who have done nothing wrong.”

"The first step to treating every American like they could be a criminal is to start collecting information on people who have done nothing wrong." said Calbrese.

The trouble with MATRIX, said Calbrese, is the volume of data it contains, much of which was purchased unbeknownst to states by Seisint Inc. Seisint is the Florida information-technology company that developed the idea for MATRIX and landed a $1.6 million contract with that state’s Department of Law Enforcement to pilot it.

"We”ve always known the database contained billions of records," Calbrese said, "but we did not understand the breadth" until the new release of Utah records highlighting Seisint’s data inventory. That data include criminal histories from 4 states, correctional data from 33 states, sexual-offender lists from 27 states, driver licenses from 15 states and motor-vehicle registrations from 13 states.

"We”re probably talking about 90 percent of the country," said Calbrese.

Wisconsin and New York withdrew from the MATRIX on March 10, 2004, due to financial and ethical concerns. This leaves just Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Connecticut -- and possibly Utah -- out of the original 13 states who signed up for the program.

Governor Walker, who suspended Utah’s participation in the MATRIX on January 29, 2004, is waiting for recommendations from an oversight committee she formed, before taking further action on MATRIX.

A few facts of note:
The MATRIX contains 20 billion records from private databases. It is the largest database on the planet. (USA Today, 11/11/03)
It as already received $12 M in funding from the federal government. (USA Today, 11/11/03)
It is expected to cost $34 M annually to run and $1.7 M per state. (Palm Beach Post, 10/4/03)
Hank Asher, the founder of Seisint, has been implicated as a drug smuggler and it was Asher’s former company, Database Technologies, that administered the contract that stripped thousands of African Americans from the Florida voter rolls before the 2000 election, erroneously contending that they were felons. (Free Exchange Policy Project, quoting Lucy Morgan, "Troubled Business May Lose Contract with State," St. Petersburg Times, August 13, 2003)
And a competing data vendor, ChoicePoint, decided not to bid on the project, saying it lacked adequate privacy safeguards. (Toronto Globe & Mail, 9/24/03)
The project is billed as a tool for state and local police, but organizers are considering giving access to the Central Intelligence Agency, said Phil Ramer, special agent in charge of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s intelligence office. (Toronto Globe & Mail, 9/24/03)
Criminal history files in the database are maintained by 15 Seisint employees, watched over by Florida state police, Mr. Ramer said. Yet a Florida Department of Law Enforcement memo obtained by The Associated Press shows potential lapses in oversight. The memo says background checks on Seisint’s Matrix workers took place only last month, more than a year into the program, and a privacy policy governing the database’s use has yet to be finalized. (Toronto Globe & Mail, 9/24/03)
Click here for a state by state breakdown of involvement in the MATRIX >>

Also, see, related for Matrix connectivity with multiple national security and military intelligence units: http://www.nga.org/Files/ppt/0803JIT_FDLE.ppt

[leveymg]

18. What's your TF? Terrorist Factor. Yes, everyone now has two scores, credit and terrorism.

High Terrorist Factor (HTF) - from the above AP article. Even correlates with your credit score. Dick Cheney was clearly interested. Also, see:

1. NSA Sweeping Up Tons of Domestic Data - Democratic Underground
Then the nsa's software analyzes this data for indications of terrorist activity. .... software systems to profile everybody as potential "terrorists". ...
www.democraticunderground.com/.../duboard.php?az...all... - Cached - Similar
2. NSA/Russert Show Thread #2 - Democratic Underground
http://www.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/contractors_t. ...... TALLAHASSEE - In an attempt to identify potential terrorists, the Florida Department of Law ...
www.democraticunderground.com/.../duboard.php?az...all... - Cached - Similar
3. FBI Plans Initiative To Profile Terrorists - washingtonpost.com
The Federal Bureau of Investigations is developing a computer-profiling ... FBI Plans Initiative To Profile Terrorists. Potential Targets Get Risk Rating ...
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/.../AR2007071001871.html - Similar
4. Marginal Revolution: Total information awareness everywhere
... 120000 "potential terrorists" based on a "terrorism quotient" developed by scoring ... At least this sort of profiling is publically accesible: ...real-time access to ... House Panel Blocks Probe of NSA Cost (AP) from money from the ...
www.marginalrevolution.com/.../2004/.../total_informati.html - Cached - Similar
5. Schneier on Security: March 2007 Archives
Friday Squid Blogging: Find Out Your Squid Quotient ..... for checking your name against potential terrorist identities and databases. ... The Difficulty of Profiling Terrorists. Interesting article: .... The NSA owns your phone calls. Your life is being lived in public whether you choose to acknowledge it or not. ...
www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/03/ -



What's your TQ? Terrorist Quotient. Yes, everyone now has two scores, credit and terrorism.

You think I'm kidding? Look at this:

The Radical Group in Context: 1. An Integrated Framework for the Analysis of Group Risk for Terrorism
Authors: Post J. M.; Ruby K. G.; Shaw E. D.

Source: Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Volume 25, Number 2, 1 April 2002 , pp. 73-100(28)

Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group


Abstract:

On the basis of a systematic expert knowledge acquisition process, a framework has been developed that takes into account critical variables—internal and external, as well as interactions between them and the group under examination—that are understood to increase risk for escalation toward political violence. The indicators identified are grouped within four conceptual categories: (1) External factors, including historical, cultural, and contextual features; (2) Key actors affecting the group, including the regime and other opponents, as well as Constituents and Supporters; (3) The Group/Organization: Characteristics, Processes, and Structures, including an examination of such factors as leadership style and decision making, group experience with violence, and group ideology and goals; and (4) Characteristics of the Immediate Situation, including Triggering Events. A total of 32 variables were identified within the 4 categories to establish the overall integrated framework. This framework provides the basis for the rigorous analysis of a radical group's risk for terrorism.
Language: English

Document Type: Research article


The full text electronic article is available for purchase. You will be able to download the full text electronic article after payment.

$38.49 plus tax

Here's what shows up on Google cache:

group in context: 1. An integrated framework for the analysis of group risk for terrorism
JM Post, KG Ruby, ED Shaw - Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 2002 - informaworld.com
... social actors. Each indicator is weighted, and scores are tallied to pro- duce
a Terrorism Potential Index (TPI). Sprinzak’s methodology ...
Cited by 33 - Related articles - BL Direct - All 4 versions

[Proud Liberal Dem]

20. I wonder if he continued Poindexter's discredited stock market/commodities idea too

wouldn't surprise me in the least. :puke: