Total Information Awareness another threat to our liberties as Americans

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

I found the same thing when I testified re crypto in DC. They ³left² and
³right² were loudly agreement on the evils of key esrow.

Dave


------ Forwarded Message
From: Bob Rosenberg <bob () bobrosenberg phoenix az us>
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 21:44:12 -0800
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Fw: Total Information Awareness another threat to our liberties as
Americans

Dave

Will other IPer's care to note that Cato agrees with our position on
TIA?

Gene Healy from Cato, gives an excellent review of the Orwellian TIA
and Poindexter's new needless position with the Pentagon.  Hopefully,
our elected officials will remind the defense department of the
Constitutional influence and position of civilians over our defense
department.

Bob Rosenberg
Helping Build the Tech Oasis - http://www.techoasis.org

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" - "Who watches the watchmen?"
                         Anon

**************************************************************

http://www.cato.org/dailys/01-20-03.html

 

January 20, 2003 


Beware of Total Information Awareness


by Gene Healy

Gene Healy <http://www.cato.org/people/healy.html>  is senior editor at
the Cato Institute.

John Poindexter, head of the Pentagon's Office of Information Awareness,
is developing a vast surveillance database to track terror suspects. The
Total Information Awareness (TIA) system will, according to Poindexter,
"break down the stovepipes" that separate commercial and government
databases, allowing OIA access to citizens' credit card purchases,
travel itineraries, telephone calling records, email, medical histories
and financial information. It would give government the power to
generate a comprehensive data profile on any U.S. citizen.

Adm. Poindexter assures us that TIA will be designed to respect
constitutional guarantees of privacy and shield law-abiding citizens
from the Pentagon's all-seeing eye. But if the history of military
surveillance of civilians is any indication, accepting that assurance
amounts to the triumph of hope over experience.

Opponents of new government surveillance measures such as TIA or
Operation TIPS, the Justice Department's aborted plan to utilize citizen
informants, often invoke the specter of the East German secret police
and communist Cuba's block watch system. But we don't have to look to
totalitarian states for cautionary tales. There's a long and troubling
history of military surveillance in this country. That history suggests
that we should loathe allowing the Pentagon access to our personal
information. 

During World War I, concerns about German saboteurs led to unrestrained
domestic spying by U.S. Army intelligence operatives. 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." In her book "Army Surveillance in
America," historian Joan M. Jensen notes, "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."

The War Department relied heavily on a quasi-private volunteer
organization, the American Protective League, composed of self-styled
patriots who agreed to inform on their fellow citizens. America's
experience with the APL makes clear that civil libertarian concerns
about Operation TIPS are, if anything, understated. APL volunteers
carried identification cards and tin badges and responded to requests
from the War Department for investigation of civilians. By the end of
the war the APL had close to a quarter of a million members and had
carried out some six million investigations.

At the War Department's request, APL volunteers harassed labor
organizers, intimidated and arrested opponents of the draft, and
investigated such potential subversives as Mexican-American leaders in
Los Angeles, pacifist groups, and antiwar religious sects. Through it
all, the army caught exactly one German spy, a naval officer who tried
to enter the United States via Nogales, Arizona.

The Army's domestic surveillance activities were substantially curtailed
after the end of World War I. But throughout the 20th Century, in
periods of domestic unrest and foreign conflict, army surveillance
ratcheted up again, most notably in the 1960s. During that tumultuous
decade, President Johnson repeatedly called on federal troops to quell
riots and restore order. To better perform that task, Army intelligence
operatives began compiling thousands of dossiers on citizens, many of
whom had committed no offense beyond protesting government policy.
Reviewing the files, the Senate Judiciary Committee noted that "comments
about the financial affairs, sex lives and psychiatric histories of
persons unaffiliated with the armed forces appear throughout the various
records systems." Justice William O. Douglas called army surveillance "a
cancer in our body politic."

Adm. Poindexter seeks to bring Pentagon surveillance into the 21st
Century, replacing the low-tech, labor intensive system relied on in the
past with high-tech data-mining techniques. He maintains that "we can
achieve the necessary security we need and still have privacy." But
given the military's legacy of privacy abuses, such vague assurances are
cold comfort. 

Some have suggested that Poindexter's record as a former Iran-Contra
defendant convicted of five felony counts of lying to Congress
disqualify him from his position. But the question isn't whether
Poindexter's the right man for the job; it's whether that job should
exist in the first place --


Gene Healy from Cato, true to form, gives an excellent review of the
Orwellian TIA and Poindexter¹s new needless position with the Pentagon.
Hopefully, our elected officials will remind the defense department of the
Constitutional influence and position of civilians over our defense
department.

 

           - mzj

 

http://www.cato.org/dailys/01-20-03.html

 

January 20, 2003 
Beware of Total Information Awareness
by Gene Healy

Gene Healy <http://www.cato.org/people/healy.html>  is senior editor at the
Cato Institute.

John Poindexter, head of the Pentagon's Office of Information Awareness, is
developing a vast surveillance database to track terror suspects. The Total
Information Awareness (TIA) system will, according to Poindexter, "break
down the stovepipes" that separate commercial and government databases,
allowing OIA access to citizens' credit card purchases, travel itineraries,
telephone calling records, email, medical histories and financial
information. It would give government the power to generate a comprehensive
data profile on any U.S. citizen.

Adm. Poindexter assures us that TIA will be designed to respect
constitutional guarantees of privacy and shield law-abiding citizens from
the Pentagon's all-seeing eye. But if the history of military surveillance
of civilians is any indication, accepting that assurance amounts to the
triumph of hope over experience.

Opponents of new government surveillance measures such as TIA or Operation
TIPS, the Justice Department's aborted plan to utilize citizen informants,
often invoke the specter of the East German secret police and communist
Cuba's block watch system. But we don't have to look to totalitarian states
for cautionary tales. There's a long and troubling history of military
surveillance in this country. That history suggests that we should loathe
allowing the Pentagon access to our personal information.

During World War I, concerns about German saboteurs led to unrestrained
domestic spying by U.S. Army intelligence operatives. 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." In her book "Army Surveillance in America," historian Joan M. Jensen
notes, "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."

The War Department relied heavily on a quasi-private volunteer organization,
the American Protective League, composed of self-styled patriots who agreed
to inform on their fellow citizens. America's experience with the APL makes
clear that civil libertarian concerns about Operation TIPS are, if anything,
understated. APL volunteers carried identification cards and tin badges and
responded to requests from the War Department for investigation of
civilians. By the end of the war the APL had close to a quarter of a million
members and had carried out some six million investigations.

At the War Department's request, APL volunteers harassed labor organizers,
intimidated and arrested opponents of the draft, and investigated such
potential subversives as Mexican-American leaders in Los Angeles, pacifist
groups, and antiwar religious sects. Through it all, the army caught exactly
one German spy, a naval officer who tried to enter the United States via
Nogales, Arizona. 

The Army's domestic surveillance activities were substantially curtailed
after the end of World War I. But throughout the 20th Century, in periods of
domestic unrest and foreign conflict, army surveillance ratcheted up again,
most notably in the 1960s. During that tumultuous decade, President Johnson
repeatedly called on federal troops to quell riots and restore order. To
better perform that task, Army intelligence operatives began compiling
thousands of dossiers on citizens, many of whom had committed no offense
beyond protesting government policy. Reviewing the files, the Senate
Judiciary Committee noted that "comments about the financial affairs, sex
lives and psychiatric histories of persons unaffiliated with the armed
forces appear throughout the various records systems." Justice William O.
Douglas called army surveillance "a cancer in our body politic."

Adm. Poindexter seeks to bring Pentagon surveillance into the 21st Century,
replacing the low-tech, labor intensive system relied on in the past with
high-tech data-mining techniques. He maintains that "we can achieve the
necessary security we need and still have privacy." But given the military's
legacy of privacy abuses, such vague assurances are cold comfort.

Some have suggested that Poindexter's record as a former Iran-Contra
defendant convicted of five felony counts of lying to Congress disqualify
him from his position. But the question isn't whether Poindexter's the right
man for the job; it's whether that job should exist in the first place

 

 

_________________________________________________________

M. Zuhdi Jasser, MD, FACP

zuhdi () jasserclinic com

 


------ End of Forwarded Message

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