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Comments on news posted 2012-12-13 10:20:21: The Wall Street Journal has a compelling read on some previously undisclosed government infighting over domestic surveillance, and the significant new surveillance powers granted to the National Counterterrorism Center. ..

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DataRiker
Premium Member
join:2002-05-19
00000

2 recommendations

DataRiker

Premium Member

WTF?

So we can spend money on this ridiculous shit, but god forbid we have affordable healthcare.
Chubbysumo
join:2009-12-01
Duluth, MN

1 recommendation

Chubbysumo

Member

This reminds me...

of a movie that came out a few years back, called minority report...
Os
join:2011-01-26
US

Os to DataRiker

Member

to DataRiker

Re: WTF?

It's all in who does the lobbying.

Anything to make money. Help people? Forget that.

precis1
@mi.us

precis1 to DataRiker

Anon

to DataRiker
Exactly! We shouldn't be spending tax dollars on either of them.
NoHereNoMo
join:2012-12-06

NoHereNoMo

Member

Wow--Uncle Sam is a pervert

Gives a whole new meaning to the term "counter-intelligence" (as in, "we will stamp out intelligence wherever we find it!!").
NoHereNoMo

NoHereNoMo to Chubbysumo

Member

to Chubbysumo

Re: This reminds me...

Hollywood is tame by comparison.

Thoughtcrime
@fluor.com

Thoughtcrime

Anon

End game

We are approaching a tipping point, beyond which this apparatus cannot be dismantled by a peaceful democratic process. For now, the people are happy to have it (shame on them), but when they realize they no longer want it, it will be too late.

Put that in your NCC!

NOCTech75
Premium Member
join:2009-06-29
Marietta, GA

NOCTech75

Premium Member

More change we can believe in!

Love this hopey changey stuff!
Mr Matt
join:2008-01-29
Eustis, FL

1 edit

1 recommendation

Mr Matt

Member

How will Uncle Sams spies compensate victims of mistakes.

Retaining data for Five Years is risky. Say I call a friend at 900-KL-5-1212 regularly for two years. Then my friend moves and is assigned a new number. His old number is assigned to someone that is determined to be a terrorist 4 years later. When the government morons review who called 900-KL-5-1212 they will find my number associated with it. Since the phone company does not usually keep accurate records of who was assigned a telephone number 4 years earlier I might become a victim of inaccurate government data.

Joe McCarthy used a technique to associate a citizen with post WW-II communism and as an enemy of the state because they were a member of the Communist Party, during the depression, when Russia was an allies, before WW-II. Any group or club can be declared a terrorist organization at any time. Those having been a member of the organization years before can then be declared a terrorist even though the nature of the organization has changed after they resigned. There is no such thing as government intelligence when applied to logical thinking.
cooperaaaron
join:2004-04-10
Joliet, IL

cooperaaaron

Member

Come and get me....

I have nothing to hide.... They are wasting their time and OUR money on this stuff....

But, otherwise, how do you catch terrorists using the internets ?

nonamesleft
join:2011-11-07
Manitowoc, WI

nonamesleft

Member

Thanks 4 nothing WSJ!

Guess another one got the paywall fever. Why don't they ever check themselves, before accusing us?
biochemistry
Premium Member
join:2003-05-09
92361

biochemistry

Premium Member

Who said what?

I would be highly interested in knowing which members of the regime were in favor of it and which members were not so we know who is guilty of treason and violating their oath to uphold the Constitution.
clone (banned)
join:2000-12-11
Portage, IN

clone (banned)

Member

The saddest part...

we're entering an era previously only rambled about by those with tin foil headwear...

We won't get an apology from all the naysayers, the bootlickers, the authority worshippers who claimed that this could never, no, would never happen in America. That we should all sit down and shut up because otherwise the "Turrists will Win(TM)".

Nope, not only will none of those who admonished people as schizos, paranoids, and nutters be giving any apologies, they will now turn to anger as they can no longer be in denial. Now they will call for the physical detention and/or re-education at the end of a billyclub or firearm of anyone who thinks that there is anything wrong with constant surveillance of people who have no evidence or suspicion of wrongdoing. Even though not so long ago, it didn't even exist according to them.

Because, well, if you care about privacy then you must have something to hide. Or those who have gone straight to the "there is no privacy anytime anywhere anymore and I like it that way because the gubbmint is keeping me safe from the boogeyman" preteen child mentality. It's really all a mental illness, and the sooner people can realize that this type of fascism only ends one way, the sooner we can try and take steps to reign it in. But people need to stop acting like little children, get up off of our collective knees, and raise a finger high in the air to all of these societal leeches.

You know which finger I mean.
Wilsdom
join:2009-08-06

Wilsdom

Member

Garbage in

Everyone should add stopovers in Yemen, rent storage facilities, take flying lessons, buy explosives precursors, grow a beard, etc.

FFH5
Premium Member
join:2002-03-03
Tavistock NJ

1 recommendation

FFH5 to nonamesleft

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to nonamesleft

Read non-paywall version here

said by nonamesleft:

Guess another one got the paywall fever. Why don't they ever check themselves, before accusing us?

Read the full article here:

»ca.finance.yahoo.com/new ··· 666.html

Top U.S. intelligence officials gathered in the White House Situation Room in March to debate a controversial proposal. Counterterrorism officials wanted to create a government dragnet, sweeping up millions of records about U.S. citizens—even people suspected of no crime.

Not everyone was on board. "This is a sea change in the way that the government interacts with the general public," Mary Ellen Callahan, chief privacy officer of the Department of Homeland Security, argued in the meeting, according to people familiar with the discussions.

A week later, the attorney general signed the changes into effect.

Through Freedom of Information Act requests and interviews with officials at numerous agencies, The Wall Street Journal has reconstructed the clash over the counterterrorism program within the administration of President Barack Obama. The debate was a confrontation between some who viewed it as a matter of efficiency—how long to keep data, for instance, or where it should be stored—and others who saw it as granting authority for unprecedented government surveillance of U.S. citizens.

The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them. That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an investigation.

Now, NCTC can copy entire government databases—flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited.

The changes also allow databases of U.S. civilian information to be given to foreign governments for analysis of their own. In effect, U.S. and foreign governments would be using the information to look for clues that people might commit future crimes.

"It's breathtaking" in its scope, said a former senior administration official familiar with the White House debate.

Counterterrorism officials say they will be circumspect with the data. "The guidelines provide rigorous oversight to protect the information that we have, for authorized and narrow purposes," said Alexander Joel, Civil Liberties Protection Officer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the parent agency for the National Counterterrorism Center.

The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution says that searches of "persons, houses, papers and effects" shouldn't be conducted without "probable cause" that a crime has been committed. But that doesn't cover records the government creates in the normal course of business with citizens.

Congress specifically sought to prevent government agents from rifling through government files indiscriminately when it passed the Federal Privacy Act in 1974. The act prohibits government agencies from sharing data with each other for purposes that aren't "compatible" with the reason the data were originally collected.

But the Federal Privacy Act allows agencies to exempt themselves from many requirements by placing notices in the Federal Register, the government's daily publication of proposed rules. In practice, these privacy-act notices are rarely contested by government watchdogs or members of the public. "All you have to do is publish a notice in the Federal Register and you can do whatever you want," says Robert Gellman, a privacy consultant who advises agencies on how to comply with the Privacy Act.

As a result, the National Counterterrorism Center program's opponents within the administration—led by Ms. Callahan of Homeland Security—couldn't argue that the program would violate the law. Instead, they were left to question whether the rules were good policy.

Under the new rules issued in March, the National Counterterrorism Center, known as NCTC, can obtain almost any database the government collects that it says is "reasonably believed" to contain "terrorism information." The list could potentially include almost any government database, from financial forms submitted by people seeking federally backed mortgages to the health records of people who sought treatment at Veterans Administration hospitals.

Previous government proposals to scrutinize massive amounts of data about innocent people have caused an uproar. In 2002, the Pentagon's research arm proposed a program called Total Information Awareness that sought to analyze both public and private databases for terror clues. It would have been far broader than the NCTC's current program, examining many nongovernmental pools of data as well.

"If terrorist organizations are going to plan and execute attacks against the United States, their people must engage in transactions and they will leave signatures," the program's promoter, Admiral John Poindexter, said at the time. "We must be able to pick this signal out of the noise."

Adm. Poindexter's plans drew fire from across the political spectrum over the privacy implications of sorting through every single document available about U.S. citizens. Congress eventually defunded the program.

The National Counterterrorism Center's ideas faced no similar public resistance. For one thing, the debate happened behind closed doors. In addition, unlike the Pentagon, the NCTC was created in 2004 specifically to use data to connect the dots in the fight against terrorism.

Even after eight years in existence, the agency isn't well known. "We're still a bit of a startup and still having to prove ourselves," said director Matthew Olsen in a rare public appearance this summer at the Aspen Institute, a leadership think tank.

The agency's best-known product is a database called TIDE, which stands for the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment. TIDE contains more than 500,000 identities suspected of terror links.

TIDE files are important because they are used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to compile terrorist "watchlists." These are lists that can block a person from boarding an airplane or obtaining a visa.

The watchlist system failed spectacularly on Christmas Day 2009 when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian man, boarded a flight to Detroit from Amsterdam wearing explosives sewn into his undergarments. He wasn't on the watchlist.

He eventually pleaded guilty to terror-related charges and is imprisoned. His bomb didn't properly detonate.

However, Mr. Abdulmutallab and his underwear did alter U.S. intelligence-gathering. A Senate investigation revealed that NCTC had received information about him but had failed to query other government databases about him. In a scathing finding, the Senate report said, "the NCTC was not organized adequately to fulfill its missions."

"This was not a failure to collect or share intelligence," said John Brennan, the president's chief counterterrorism adviser, at a White House press conference in January 2010. "It was a failure to connect and integrate and understand the intelligence we had."

As result, Mr. Obama demanded a watchlist overhaul. Agencies were ordered to send all their leads to NCTC, and NCTC was ordered to "pursue thoroughly and exhaustively terrorism threat threads."

Quickly, NCTC was flooded with terror tips—each of which it was obligated to "exhaustively" pursue. By May 2010 there was a huge backlog, according a report by the Government Accountability Office.

Legal obstacles emerged. NCTC analysts were permitted to query federal-agency databases only for "terrorism datapoints," say, one specific person's name, or the passengers on one particular flight. They couldn't look through the databases trolling for general "patterns." And, if they wanted to copy entire data sets, they were required to remove information about innocent U.S. people "upon discovery."

But they didn't always know who was innocent. A person might seem innocent today, until new details emerge tomorrow.

"What we learned from Christmas Day"—from the failed underwear bomb—was that some information "might seem more relevant later," says Mr. Joel, the national intelligence agency's civil liberties officer. "We realized we needed it to be retained longer."

Late last year, for instance, NCTC obtained an entire database from Homeland Security for analysis, according to a person familiar with the transaction. Homeland Security provided the disks on the condition that NCTC would remove all innocent U.S. person data after 30 days.

After 30 days, a Homeland Security team visited and found that the data hadn't yet been removed. In fact, NCTC hadn't even finished uploading the files to its own computers, that person said. It can take weeks simply to upload and organize the mammoth data sets.

Homeland Security granted a 30-day extension. That deadline was missed, too. So Homeland Security revoked NCTC's access to the data.

To fix problems like these that had cropped up since the Abdulmutallab incident, NCTC proposed the major expansion of its powers that would ultimately get debated at the March meeting in the White House. It moved to ditch the requirement that it discard the innocent-person data. And it asked for broader authority to troll for patterns in the data.

As early as February 2011, NCTC's proposal was raising concerns at the privacy offices of both Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, according to emails reviewed by the Journal.

At the Department of Justice, Chief Privacy Officer Nancy Libin raised concerns about whether the guidelines could unfairly target innocent people, these people said. Some research suggests that, statistically speaking, there are too few terror attacks for predictive patterns to emerge. The risk, then, is that innocent behavior gets misunderstood—say, a man buying chemicals (for a child's science fair) and a timer (for the sprinkler) sets off false alarms.

An August government report indicates that, as of last year, NCTC wasn't doing predictive pattern-matching.

The internal debate was more heated at Homeland Security. Ms. Callahan and colleague Margo Schlanger, who headed the 100-person Homeland Security office for civil rights and civil liberties, were concerned about the implications of turning over vast troves of data to the counterterrorism center, these people said.

They and Ms. Libin at the Justice Department argued that the failure to catch Mr. Abdulmutallab wasn't caused by the lack of a suspect—he had already been flagged—but by a failure to investigate him fully. So amassing more data about innocent people wasn't necessarily the right solution.

The most sensitive Homeland Security data trove at stake was the Advanced Passenger Information System. It contains the name, gender, birth date and travel information for every airline passenger entering the U.S.

Previously, Homeland Security had pledged to keep passenger data only for 12 months. But NCTC was proposing to copy and keep it for up to five years. Ms. Callahan argued this would break promises the agency had made to the public about its use of personal data, these people said.

Discussions sometimes got testy, according to emails reviewed by the Journal. In one case, Ms. Callahan sent an email complaining that "examples" provided to her by an unnamed intelligence official were "complete non-sequiturs" and "non-responsive."

In May 2011, Ms. Callahan and Ms. Schlanger raised their concerns with the chief of their agency, Janet Napolitano. They fired off a memo under the longwinded title, "How Best to Express the Department's Privacy and Civil Liberties Concerns over Draft Guidelines Proposed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center," according to an email obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The contents of the memo, which appears to run several pages, were redacted.

The two also kept pushing the NCTC officials to justify why they couldn't search for terrorism clues less invasively, these people said. "I'm not sure I'm totally prepared with the firestorm we're about to create," Ms. Schlanger emailed Ms. Callahan in November, referring to the fact that the two wanted more privacy protections. Ms. Schlanger returned to her faculty position at the University of Michigan Law School soon after but remains an adviser to Homeland Security.

To resolve the issue, Homeland Security's deputy secretary, Jane Holl Lute, requested the March meeting at the White House. The second in command from Homeland Security, the Justice Department, the FBI, NCTC and the office of the director of national intelligence sat at the small conference table. Normal protocol for such meeting is for staffers such as Ms. Callahan to sit against the walls of the room and keep silent.

By this point, Ms. Libin's concern that innocent people could be inadvertently targeted had been largely overruled at the Department of Justice, these people said. Colleagues there were more concerned about missing the next terrorist threat.

That left Ms. Callahan as the most prominent opponent of the proposed changes. In an unusual move, Ms. Lute asked Ms. Callahan to speak about Homeland Security's privacy concerns. Ms. Callahan argued that the rules would constitute a "sea change" because, whenever citizens interact with the government, the first question asked will be, are they a terrorist?

Mr. Brennan considered the arguments. And within a few days, the attorney general, Eric Holder, had signed the new guidelines. The Justice Department declined to comment about the debate over the guidelines.

Under the new rules, every federal agency must negotiate terms under which it would hand over databases to NCTC. This year, Ms. Callahan left Homeland Security for private practice, and Ms. Libin left the Justice Department to join a private firm.

Homeland Security is currently working out the details to give the NCTC three data sets—the airline-passenger database known as APIS; another airline-passenger database containing information about non-U.S. citizen visitors to the U.S.; and a database about people seeking refugee asylum. It previously agreed to share databases containing information about foreign-exchange students and visa applications.

Once the terms are set, Homeland Security is likely to post a notice in the Federal Register. The public can submit comments to the Federal Register about proposed changes, although Homeland Security isn't required to make changes based on the comments.


NormanS
I gave her time to steal my mind away
MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
TP-Link TD-8616
Asus RT-AC66U B1
Netgear FR114P

NormanS to Mr Matt

MVM

to Mr Matt

Re: How will Uncle Sams spies compensate victims of mistakes.

said by Mr Matt:

Joe McCarthy used a technique to associate a citizen with post WW-II communism and as an enemy of the state because they were a member of the Communist Party, during the depression, when Russia was an ally, before WW-II.

Russia, more properly the Soviet Union, was not our "ally" at any other time than during WWII. And it was an uneasy alliance at best.
ISurfTooMuch
join:2007-04-23
Tuscaloosa, AL

1 recommendation

ISurfTooMuch to NOCTech75

Member

to NOCTech75

Re: More change we can believe in!

You don't honestly believe that this is confined to one administration or political party, do you? All of them are dirty, and it's been that way for decades. Plus, you have this whole level of government that isn't elected by anyone and isn't really answerable to anyone. These people, by and large, don't change when administrations change, so, no matter who's in office, they just keep chugging along.

FFH5
Premium Member
join:2002-03-03
Tavistock NJ

1 edit

1 recommendation

FFH5 to biochemistry

Premium Member

to biochemistry

Re: Who said what?

said by biochemistry:

I would be highly interested in knowing which members of the regime were in favor of it and which members were not so we know who is guilty of treason and violating their oath to uphold the Constitution.

Attny Genl Holder signed the new rules in to effect. It appears only 3 people were against it. Mary Ellen Callahan, chief privacy officer of the Department of Homeland Security. Department of Justice, Chief Privacy Officer Nancy Libin. Margo Schlanger, who headed the 100-person Homeland Security office for civil rights and civil liberties. In other words, 3 women without any power at all were against it. The rest of the admin was for it. This year, Ms. Callahan left Homeland Security for private practice, and Ms. Libin left the Justice Department to join a private firm.

»Read non-paywall version here

ArrayList
DevOps
Premium Member
join:2005-03-19
Mullica Hill, NJ

ArrayList to Os

Premium Member

to Os

Re: WTF?

the bit that is missed is that when you help people, you help everyone.
ArrayList

ArrayList to FFH5

Premium Member

to FFH5

Re: Who said what?

Happy Holidays

cableties
Premium Member
join:2005-01-27

cableties to NormanS

Premium Member

to NormanS

Re: How will Uncle Sams spies compensate victims of mistakes.

I don't trust them rooskies!

e.g, Russo-Finnish war, Bolshevik Revolution, Marxism, Lenin, Stalin...

DataRiker
Premium Member
join:2002-05-19
00000

DataRiker to Wilsdom

Premium Member

to Wilsdom

Re: Garbage in

LOL!
DataRiker

1 recommendation

DataRiker to precis1

Premium Member

to precis1

Re: WTF?

said by precis1 :

Exactly! We shouldn't be spending tax dollars on either of them.

Says the person from a tax funded IP address

Receiving gov health insurance no doubt
sandman_1
join:2011-04-23
11111

sandman_1

Member

Paywall bypass

To get past the pay wall, copy and past the article name as shown on the WSJ site into google and do a search. Click on the article from there and it should show. They allow you to view if it is from a Google search.

goalieskates
Premium Member
join:2004-09-12
land of big

goalieskates to ISurfTooMuch

Premium Member

to ISurfTooMuch

Re: More change we can believe in!

said by ISurfTooMuch:

You don't honestly believe that this is confined to one administration or political party, do you?

True overall, although Obama has taken this to a whole new level. He doesn't even pretend to follow the Constitution, doesn't care who knows it, and accepts no limits on his power. As the saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
ISurfTooMuch
join:2007-04-23
Tuscaloosa, AL

1 recommendation

ISurfTooMuch to cooperaaaron

Member

to cooperaaaron

Re: Come and get me....

So you have nothing to hide? OK then, please post the following information here:

Your phone call history for the past year.
Your Netflix history for the past year.
All online purchases you've made for the past year, both for yourself and others.
Any books you've bought, either locally or online, for the past year.
Your friend lists for any social networks you belong to.
All e-mails you've sent and received in the last year.
Your browser's history.
Your browser's bookmarks.
The name and address of your employer, and the position you hold there.
Any trips you've taken over the past year, including destinations, modes of travel, reason for going, and the names of anyone who accompanied you.
Your credit card statements for the past year.
Last year's tax return.
The names and addresses of any organizations you've donated money to or performed paid or unpaid work for in the past year.

That's enough for now. I'll let you know if you need to post more.

Since you have nothing to hide, I don't think you'll have any problem posting that info. Then we can determine if you're as innocent as you claim to be.
sandman_1
join:2011-04-23
11111

1 edit

1 recommendation

sandman_1

Member

They are planning something

Our government is planning something big on the horizon. Look at all the BS legislation they have passed (shoved down our throats), in the past 10-12 years. Think about it, this so called "War on Terror" could go on forever. As time passes, more crap like this will happen, more freedoms will be thrown to the curb, our liberties trampled and stomped, and any right to privacy snuffed out, as we march ever down the road towards that inevitable conclusion, the country that we thought we knew and cherished for its freedoms is...gone.
ISurfTooMuch
join:2007-04-23
Tuscaloosa, AL

ISurfTooMuch to goalieskates

Member

to goalieskates

Re: More change we can believe in!

And his predecessor was any different? You may recall that he asserted that he could declare anyone an enemy combatant and have them held without being charged with anything, and such detentions could not be challenged in court. He also gave the NSA free reign to collect the call history of every single phone number in the country. And finally he claimed that he could alter any bill before signing it into law by simply issuing a signing statement making whatever changes he liked. And don't forget Total Information Awareness, which was run by John Poindexter, a convicted felon.

And it goes back further than that. The Clinton administration continued to push the Clipper Chip, which development was begun in the first Bush administration. Go back to Reagan, and you'll find the Library Awareness Program, which was an effort to get librarians to spy on what patrons were reading and share that information with the government. Further than that, you'll find the government illegally spying on people opposed to the Vietnam War,as well as civil rights activists.
IanR
join:2001-03-22
Fort Mill, SC

IanR

Member

Chief Privacy Officer at Homeland security?

This must be THE most frustrating job in all Gvt:)
elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA

1 recommendation

elray to DataRiker

Member

to DataRiker

Re: WTF?

said by DataRiker:

So we can spend money on this ridiculous shit, but god forbid we have affordable healthcare.

Healthcare is affordable.

When you expect someone else to pay the bill in your name, and you intentionally mislabel it "health insurance", you enable the cost the skyrocket.
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