NSA just one of many

NSA just one of many federal agencies spying on Americans
By DOUG THOMPSON
Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
Dec 26, 2005, 21:35
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7904.shtml

Spying on Americans by the super-secret National Security Agency is not only more
widespread than President George W. Bush admits but is part of a concentrated,
government-wide effort to gather and catalog information on U.S. citizens, sources
close to the administration say.

Besides the NSA, the Pentagon, Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of
Homeland Security and dozens of private contractors are spying on millions of
Americans 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

?It?s a total effort to build dossiers on as many Americans as possible,? says a
former NSA agent who quit in disgust over use of the agency to spy on Americans.
?We?re no longer in the business of tracking our enemies. We?re spying on everyday
Americans.?

?It's really obvious to me that it's a look-at-everything type program,? says
cryptology expert Bruce Schneier.

Schneier says he suspects that the NSA is turning its massive spy satellites inward
on the United States and intentionally gathering vast streams of raw data from many
more people than disclosed to date ? potentially including all e-mails and phone
calls within the United States.
But the NSA spying is just the tip of the iceberg.

Although supposedly killed by Congress more than 18 months ago, the Defense Advance
Project Research Agency?s Terrorist Information Awareness (TIA) system, formerly
called the ?Total Information Awareness? program, is alive and well and collecting
data in real time on Americans at a computer center located at 3801 Fairfax Drive in
Arlington, Virginia.

The system, set up by retired admiral John Poindexter, once convicted of lying to
Congress in the Iran-Contra scandal, compiles financial, travel and other data on
the day-to-day activities of Americans and then runs that data through a computer
model to look for patterns that the agency deems ?terrorist-related behavior.?

Poindexter admits the program was quietly moved into the Pentagon?s ?black bag?
program where it does escapes Congressional oversight.

?TIA builds a profile of every American who travels, has a bank account, uses credit
cards and has a credit record,? says security expert Allen Banks. ?The profile
establishes norms based on the person?s spending and travel habits. Then the system
looks for patterns that break from the norms, such of purchases of materials that
are considered likely for terrorist activity, travel to specific areas or a change
in spending habits.?

Patterns that fit pre-defined criteria result in an investigative alert and the
individual becomes a ?person of interest? who is referred to the Department of
Justice and Department of Homeland Security, Banks says.

Intelligence pros call the process ?data mining? and that is something the NSA
excels at as well says former NSA signals intelligence analyst Russell Tice.

"The technology exists," says Tice, who left the NSA earlier this year.

"Say Aunt Molly in Oklahoma calls her niece at an Army base in Germany and says,
'Isn't it horrible about those terrorists and September 11th,'" Tice told the
Atlanta Constitution recently. ?That conversation would not only be captured by NSA
satellites listening in on Germany ? which is legal ? but flagged and listened to by
NSA analysts and possibly transcribed for further investigation. All you would have
to do is move the vacuum cleaner a little to the left and begin sucking up the other
end of that conversation. You move it a little more and you could be picking up
everything people are saying from California to New York."

The Pentagon has built a massive database of Americans it considers threats,
including members of antiwar groups, peace activists and writers opposed to the war
in Iraq. Pentagon officials now claim they are ?reviewing the files? to see if the
information is necessary to the ?war on terrorism.?

?Given the military's legacy of privacy abuses, such vague assurances are cold
comfort,? says Gene Healy, senior editor of the CATO Institute in Washington.

?During World War I, concerns about German saboteurs led to unrestrained domestic
spying by U.S. Army intelligence operatives,? says Healy. ?Army spies were given
free reign to gather information on potential subversives, and were often empowered
to make arrests as special police officers. Occasionally, they carried false
identification as employees of public utilities to allow them, as the chief
intelligence officer for the Western Department put it, ?to enter offices or
residences of suspects gracefully, and thereby obtain data.??

?There's a long and troubling history of military surveillance in this country,?
Healy adds. ?That history suggests that we should loathe allowing the Pentagon
access to our personal information.?

In her book Army Surveillance in America, historian Joan M. Jensen noted, ?What
began as a system to protect the government from enemy agents became a vast
surveillance system to watch civilians who violated no law but who objected to
wartime policies or to the war itself.?

?It?s a fucking nightmare,? says a Congressional aide who recently obtained
information on the program for his boss but asked not to be identified because he
fears retaliation from the Bush administration. ?We?re collecting more information
on Americans than on real enemies of our country.?

Sen. John Rockefeller says he raised concerns more than two years ago about
increased spying on Americans but ? as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee
? could not share that concern with colleagues.

"For the last few days, I have witnessed the President, the Vice-President, the
Secretary of State, and the Attorney-General repeatedly misrepresent the facts,"
Rockefeller said last week. When he was first briefed about the activity in 2003, we
sent a handwritten note to Vice President Dick Cheney outlining his concerns.

"I am retaining a copy of this letter in a sealed envelope in the secure spaces of
the Senate intelligence committee to ensure that I have a record of this
communication," Rockefeller told Cheney. However, Rockefeller says now, ?my concerns
were never addressed, and I was prohibited from sharing my views with my
colleagues.?

Missouri Congressman William Clay worries that the Bush Adminstration is skirting
the law by letting private contractors handle the data mining.

"The agencies involved in data mining are trying to skirt the Privacy Act by
claiming that they hold no data," said Clay. Instead, they use private companies to
maintain and sift through the data, he said.

"Technically, that gets them out from under the Privacy Act," he said. "Ethically,
it does not."