The Big Brother Is Watching
Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
The Guardian
21 May, 2003Civil liberties groups raised their concerns yesterday about the Pentagon's plans for cyber-surveillance systems which would give the government access to private emails and medical, education, travel and financial records. The fears were expressed as the defence department reported on its plans for the total information awareness (Tia) programme.
The project is the brainchild of the Pentagon's defence advanced research projects agency (Darpa) and would significantly expand the areas of private life into which the authorities could go. In February, Congress asked Darpa for a report on the project.
Defence contractors and universities have already applied for potential contracts to develop the programme in anticipation of it receiving approval.
Tia is based on the notion, promoted by the retired admiral John Poindexter, that terrorists will be engaged in a series of transactions involving finances, communications and travel plans that will enable them to be tracked down if sufficient data is accessed.
James Dempsey, the executive director of the Centre for Democracy and Technology, told the congressional committee reviewing the plans that the government was entitled to powers including the infiltration of organisations and wiretaps.
However, he argued that the normal checks and balances of the system had been seriously eroded by the Patriot Act and government actions in the wake of September 11. "Prior to 9/11, the government had awesome powers but failed to use them well," said Mr Dempsey. "Those failures had little if anything to do with the rules established to protect privacy."
Mr Dempsey said that "under the Patriot Act and other laws, the FBI might have the authority to scoop up entire databases of information, including data on persons suspected of no wrongdoing."
Under the Pentagon plans, the FBI would be able to use the technique known as data mining, which supposedly finds evidence of possible terrorist plans by scanning billions of everyday transactions, including medical information, travel records and financial data.
According to an FBI presentation obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Centre, the FBI's use of public source information has already grown about 100-fold since 1992.
Barry Steinhardt, the director of the technology and liberty programme at the American Civil Liberties Union said there was no evidence that the measures adopted would make people safer. The ACLU produced its own report that asked: "How can Americans remain free when their every transaction is opened up to potential government scrutiny?"
The ACLU said that the other concerns were whether the principle of "individualised suspicion" would be maintained in the face of a system designed to guess about who might be a suspect.