The Salem News
Monday, November 25, 2002
At any price?
War against terrorism not worth winning
if it comes at cost of individual rights
by Barbara Anderson
Well, I guess the terrorists are winning.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the
Pentagon is "building a system called 'Total Information Awareness' that would effectively provide government officials
with immediate access to our personal information: all of our communications (phone calls, e-mails
and web searches), financial records, purchases, prescriptions, school records,
medical records and travel history. Under this program, our entire lives would be catalogued and
available to government officials."
Many Americans have decided that we have nothing to fear as
much as fear of terrorism, and they did not object to the first float of the Homeland Security Act which contained this loss of
privacy. The idea of a government-run central database that can track, well, everyone, is
reassuring to them.
If the government ever gets mad at you, you can't hide, get
money, eat, have a job, or run a guerrilla revolution without getting caught and crushed; but maybe you'll never offend the
government. I'm not in a position to hug that illusion, having offended more than my share of
politicians. But some of you may know when to keep your mouths shut.
Just to make sure you can't defend yourself if power-hungry
statists take over and enjoy having you under their control, get out there and support gun control too.
See, the terrorists don't have to kill Americans or blow up
the White House or the Super Bowl. They don't hate individuals, buildings, or stadiums; they hate the idea of America, the
freedoms that we all enjoy here. Once we give them up voluntarily, the terrorists can
celebrate; we will be just like the people in their countries, and all those places in the
world whose citizens properly fear their leaders.
Can't happen here? Can anyone give me one reason why not?
Are we a different species from the human beings who have struggled to defend themselves and their families against the
armed power of government for all of recorded history?
Yes, illegal immigration is a problem. Some immigrants have
crept into the country to do harm. Many of them, however, are here trying to escape the abuses of their own
governments. There are very few people on the planet who wouldn't be better
off here than they are wherever they are instead. So why don't we just let all of them come here? Move
over, Americans; you're hogging the land of the free.
We can protect ourselves from traveling terrorists by having
a National ID card with a centralized database, so we can keep track of them. Maybe then they'll stay where they are,
since America won't be all that much different than where they came from.
Eventually the database can be expanded so that someone
always knows where everyone in the world is and what they are all doing.
In the mid-'90s, my partner Chip Ford, then director of an
organization called Freedom First, wrote an article titled "High Tech and the Age of
Intrusion," in which he tracked the erosion of our freedom. Beginning with the social security
card, which we were promised would never be used for general identification, to today's database marketing, he chronicles
the broken promises and warns that modern crime-prevention techniques like DNA
fingerprinting can also be used against ordinary citizens.
Have I been overly influenced by his concern?
No, I was already frightened by reading Orwell's 1984 in
college. But many of us thought once that date came and went in a free America, we'd dodged the totalitarian bullet. So fine,
no one has put your face in a cage full of rats yet; good for you.
A few years later, I danced to the music of Rare Earth:
"Hey, Big Brother, as soon as you arrive ... take a closer look at the people you meet, and notice the fear in their eye,
yeah."
As it turns out, we have a lot more to fear than fear
itself. Very few rallied to the defense of privacy and freedom: on Massachusetts talk radio, David Brudnoy doesn't think that
the loss of liberties will enhance our own security, but Rush Limbaugh, Jay Severin and Avi Nelson
all stated their willingness to give up some of both for "security," as if there
is such a thing. Only Jim Braude on WTKK fulfilled the role I'm sure Jerry Williams would have played a
decade ago.
The Homeland Security Act passed both branches of Congress
with little opposition. As Rare Earth asked us all, back in the '70s, "Now that you've got the picture, what you going
to do?"
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The Boston Herald
Monday, December 2, 2002
Mission Unconscionable
by Cosmo Macero Jr.
It's the holiday season, and your federal government is
going shopping.
But will Total Information Awareness fit down John Poindexter's chimney?
The retired Navy rear admiral - a key figure in the
Iran-Contra scandal - is the prime target of civil libertarians spooked by the idea of a central database on consumer activity.
Famous Poindexter quote: "I simply did not want any outside
interference."
That was his answer in 1987 when asked why, as national
security adviser, he never told Congress about a secret alliance between the United States and Nicaraguan rebels.
Americans had trouble relating to the retired admiral, who
ultimately appealed and beat a conviction for lying to Congress.
Fast forward 15 years, and now Poindexter is leading the
anti-terrorism info mission for the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
All he wants for Christmas: "Revolutionary technology for
ultra-large all-source information repositories," according to the Pentagon's solicitation for proposals.
But if Poindexter as figurehead for a consumer-oriented
spying program is enough to scare privacy advocates, the particulars of what DARPA is actually trying to build ought to
send them into hiding.
The Pentagon outlines the goal of Total Information
Awareness with six steps: detect; classify; ID; track; understand; pre-empt.
All you have to do is fill in the blanks: Detect unusual
consumer activity; ID and classify the consumer; track the consumer's movements ... and so on.
The premise alone suggests J. Edgar Hoover has been
reanimated for the war on terrorism.
Because the starting point for this Mission Unconscionable
is a chilling government catalog of everyday American life.
And the red flags won't be limited to clumsy consumer
purchases of firearms, fertilizer and tickets to Tel Aviv.
Consider: The data input list for Total Information
Awareness suggests the Pentagon will track Americans' "financial, education, travel, medical, veterinary,
transportation, housing" and other transactions.
My favorite: "Place and event entry."
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean the government
won't be following you.
"The database envisioned is of an unprecedented scale, will
most likely be distributed (and) must be capable of being continuously updated," the Pentagon says.
Perhaps the data "will be distributed" in the same way the
FBI circulated a post-Sept. 11, 2001, list of hundreds of people, not suspects, whom the agency thought could provide
useful information.
"A year later, the list has taken on a life of its own, with
multiplying - and error-filled - versions being passed around like bootleg music," The Wall Street Journal recently reported.
"Some companies fed a version of the list into their databases and now use it to screen job
applicants and customers."
Sadly, the Pentagon's language on the crucial task of
protecting Americans from routine government intrusion reads like an afterthought.
"Business rules are required to enforce security policy and
views appropriate for the viewer's role."
Huh?
Or this: "To protect the privacy of individuals not
affiliated with terrorism, DARPA seeks technologies ... for purging data structures appropriately."
Aren't the vast majority of Americans not affiliated with
terrorism?
The full extent of the TIA's shortcomings comes into focus
when you consider that: Nonclassified subcontractors and non-U.S. citizens are allowed to work on the project as
long as their duties are segregated from classified work; and foreign corporations, under
certain conditions, may also be involved in developing this database of "unprecedented
scale."
Consumer privacy - once a sacred principle to Attorney
General John Ashcroft when he served in the U.S. Senate - is eroding so quickly in Washington that most Americans don't
recognize the threat.
But the corporate partners that Poindexter is negotiating
with recognized it almost immediately - at least with regards to their own peace of mind.
Frequently asked question No. 41 from the Pentagon's
solicitation: "Our company is not comfortable submitting personal Social Security numbers in this type of document. Must
SSNs be provided?"
Question No. 76: "Can the government prevent personal data
(e.g. SSNs) from being released through FOIA, or if awarded might the proposal become public?"
The Pentagon's response: "Personal data is exempt from FOIA
... commercial and financial information contained in a proposal submitted to DARPA are also exempt from
FOIA. More information on FOIA exemptions is available at ..."
So the most guarded information about consumer-buying
patterns, financial transactions, medical information and even the very places that Americans visit will soon be an open book
to John Poindexter.
Yet his corporate partners get a federal safety shield and
personal guidance on how to avoid public scrutiny.
Your federal government is going shopping. And your
fundamental right to be left alone is at the top of the Pentagon's list.
Someone needs to tell John Poindexter that after all these
years, Americans can finally relate.
Because, quite simply, we don't want this kind of outside
interference.
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The MetroWest Daily News
Monday, December 2, 2002
George W.'s gulag
By Rob Meltzer
Perhaps one of the greatest misunderstandings of the Patriot
Act and the Homeland Security Department is that an incidental effect of the battle against terrorism might be some loss of
civil liberties. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is an explicit goal of the Patriot Act
and the Homeland Security Department to infringe upon previously protected constitutional
rights in the interests of detecting and stamping out terrorist cells. Here's a scenario that
illustrates the point:
Let's assume that it is April of 2001, you are a resident of
Arizona and the Homeland Security Department -- signed into law last week -- is in place.
The FBI has just learned that three Arab men are taking
flying lessons in Arizona and these men don't seem to have any interest in learning how to land a plane. The FBI duly
commences an investigation and surveillance of these individuals.
Meanwhile, you have a neighbor who is a Lebanese Christian.
Shortly after the attack on the Cole, your neighbor, who has no love for Muslims, writes a letter to the editor of your local
newspaper suggesting that maybe, perhaps, the United States government should try to
understand the anger at work in the Arab world. A copy of the letter ends up in the
Homeland Security Department, which immediately begins a secret investigation of your
neighbor. Based upon secret warrants, the investigators find that your neighbor routinely
sends checks to Beirut, and that some of the funds can be traced back to a
check written by you to your neighbor.
Using secret warrants based upon this information, the
Homeland Security Department checks your financial records and your credit card information, and discovers that you
frequent the same restaurant frequented by the flight students. You receive a knock on your
door at 1 a.m., and you are whisked away in your pajamas without any explanation to your
family. (In the world of national security, where hours matter, investigators don't have to wait
until morning).
During your interrogation, at which you have no right to
legal counsel, you inform your interrogators that you don't know the flight students, that you know that your neighbor
sends money to his mother in Beirut and that you bought a lawn mower at your neighbor's yard sale
a few months before and paid by check.
Now the Department is in a quandary. You are now aware that
the government is investigating your neighbor and the flight students who you might see in the restaurant. If you
are released, you could jeopardize the entire investigation into a possible terrorist cell.
Consequently, you could be held, indefinitely and incommunicado, until the government
decides that your information is no longer a threat to an ongoing investigation. And your
family has no ability to find out where you are.
I'll reiterate the point. This scenario isn't a worst case
scenario. It's a best case scenario. It's how the investigation is supposed to work. A few years ago, this fact pattern would
have been a hypothetical law school exam in constitutional abuse. Not anymore.
It's at times like this that we should remember that not
everyone in Stalin's prison system was guilty of subversion or some crime. Stalin's prisons were filled with undesirables,
political dissidents and people who had no idea why they were a threat to the state. It's also at times
like this that we like to remember that the United States of America has a Supreme
Court, entrusted with protecting citizens against the kinds of abuses that are described here, the
midnight knock on the door, guilt by association, unlawful detention, the right to counsel,
the right to a jury trial, the right to know the charges against you, the right to cross examine
witnesses, the right to freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, and so forth. It now
appears that none of this matters when a matter of national security is at stake.
Of course, we could still hope that the United States
Supreme Court would demonstrate a fierce independence, and would recognize that it cannot, in good conscience, allow
wholesale violations of civil liberties to proceed. On the other hand, the current Republican
majority in the United States Senate is licking its chops over such delicious ideas as
appointing John Ashcroft or Ken Starr to be chief justice.
Just a little something that you might want to think about,
as you sit in your chicken wire pen under the blistering sun, perhaps in Cuba, or perhaps somewhere else, in George W.'s
gulag.
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