"Food for thought" More war philosophy-

[billvon 3,116]

> Until an agent looks at the personal information of someone to
> determine if a law has been broken, an investigation has not
> occurred.

This is quite true, and is why the system can lead to abuses.

Let me paint you a picture of what the TIA can do with technology we have right now:

A skydiver (we'll call him Joe) lives in NY and wants to go to a boogie in Florida. He posts on DZ.com about the usual stuff (politics, boogies, Iraq) and as a result has friends all over the world. He calls his friends in NY and finds out some people from Cape Town, London and Belfast are going to the boogie. He gives them a call, too, and decides to go to the boogie at the last minute. His credit cards are maxed out from the last boogie so he goes to the airport to try to buy a ticket with cash. He's not sure when he's coming back - he may get a ride from a guy with a van - so he buys a one-way ticket.

Deep in the TIA, a computer notices someone buying a one-way ticket with cash right after he made several international calls. This fits a threat profile. A flag is set, a flag that means "keep an eye on this guy." A basic search is performed, and his various usernames, email addresses and credit card numbers are matched up. A review of his public internet postings shows up many hits on key words - arab, biological weapon, terrorism, anti-americanism. His 'threat level' is bumped up a notch.

Joe gets ready to leave for Florida. Before he leaves, his computer gets a virus, and sends out a bunch of emails with the virus in it (which is often how viruses spread themselves.) A firewall detects this as a DOS attack, blocks the emails, and notifies his service provider so they can determine whether he's a hacker or just has a virus. The TIA intercepts this message; his threat level goes up another notch.

At this point they begin to monitor his email closely. They find that he receives email from a company that is known to sell child pornography, and in fact he receives a few pictures of child porn. (This is spam but they have no way to know that.)

Now a human is notified, and the human notes a high threat level and illegal activity (downloading of child porn.) He gets a subpoena and starts a monitoring program that installs itself in his computer and sends them a list of everything installed in it. They find half a dozen images of child porn on his hard drive. (He deleted the spam but not the attachements; Joe didn't even know they were separate.) They now have something concrete on him.

They do a check to see where his cellphone is. The E911 service is used to pinpoint his location - he's near the airport.

They add his face to the face-recognition program at the airport. It gets a hit on a man getting out of a cab. They check the license number on the cab, and it's owned by another high-threat person - a Pakistani who's been to Pakistan twice in the past three years, and has been arrested several times for suspicious behavior (he would park his cab too close to security areas.) They check the flight records and Joe is flying out in two hours. They then watch as he goes through security. Just before security, he opens bags to rearrange his things, and they see - a parachute! They see him put it back in the bag to hide it and he goes through security. They cannot contact the TSA peple quickly enough to stop him at the checkpoint, so they contact airport security.

He is arrested at gunpoint, handcuffed and taken to a secure room, where he is questioned. Why was he trying to get on a plane with a hidden parachute? What's this device in his rig that has a little blasting cap on it? You better tell us, son, we've got you on child porn charges already. Wouldn't want to have to tell the press that, you know.

Now, Joe is going to miss the boogie. Much more importantly, he's now on a list of people who are medium level threats, and it will be impossible to get off that list since it is not even an official (i.e. legal) list, it's just a file in a computer somewhere. He has a child porn charge to beat, which he will probably be able to do pretty easily; they have to prove he paid for it to convict him. He will have to explain why he's trying to beat a child porn rap to people, and will have to take extraordinary measures when websurfing to avoid any porn at all, since he will now be monitored. He will also notice that he gets extra screening at airports, and he won't be able to travel with his rig any more; TSA simply won't let him.

All the technology listed above has been tested and used in the field. TIA just puts it all together.

[Zenister 0]

well said Wendy..it SHOULD be a pain in the ass for the government to invade my privacy. If it costs a significant amount of time and energy to simply investigate then system is harder to abuse and less likely to be used 'frivolously' in what is being described it would be far to easy for a bored government drone to find out everything they wanted about someone. I’ve been around the planet a few to many times to have that much faith in human nature..and yes i consider the collecting of that much information about me an invasion.

Our democracy is a cumbersome inefficient process as well, should we stream line it so the next CIC wont have to jump thru all the hoops to invade or raise taxes..whatever.. without the checks and balances of congress and the courts?

Anyone remember the axiom about the mills of the gods?

safety is not worth freedom.

____________________________________
Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.

[kallend 2,148]

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The best thing about the current system is that it's a little more of a pain in the rear and time-consuming. If it's enough hassle, it makes you think twice.

With a huge database of already-mined and already-analyzed information, it would be less hassle. More productive sometimes, but, you know, I DON'T WANT IT. Let's say I disagree with someone in some analysis section or another. Maybe I'm a (gasp) peacenik. While my constitutional rights are just as important as anyone else's, the edges to those rights aren't always hard.

And the person who I disagree with has access to a whole lot more data, with a whole lot less effort, than before.

Wendy W.

Absolutely correct. This level of intrusion into private lives by the government is simply wrong wrong wrong in the home of the brave and the land of the free.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[PhillyKev 0]

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BTW, whip out the numbers and show that our justice system is less than 98% accurate on guilty verdicts.

Bad comparison considering the current trend is to incarcerate individuals without formal charges, let alone a conviction.

[kmcguffee 0]

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The best thing about the current system is that it's a little more of a pain in the rear and time-consuming. If it's enough hassle, it makes you think twice.

No it doesn't. It just takes longer to get the information that is needed. We have enough real cases to investigate (in fact we have too many). We don't have time to waste just snooping into law abiding citizen's personal lives for the hell of it. Since the current system requires so many man hours to complete a case the government has to hire more investigators to get the cases complete. The system needs checks and balances but there are better ways to do it than wasting the times of the investigators who are trying to do the right thing. If you have ever seen a Grand Jury review and give authority for a subpoena you would be appalled. Most do not even pay attention to what is being presented. I have never had a Grand Jury Subpoena rejected by the Grand Jury. I have had my supervisor reject an Administrative Subpoena and recommend investigative alternatives that are less intrusive.

I am all for privacy. I like my privacy too, but there are checks within the system that are supposed to protect your privacy (like the Grand Jury review) that really do not. When I took this job I swore to uphold the constitution and I take that very seriously. My suggestions on how to fix the system are not just to make my job easier or allow me to violate people's privacy. They are ways to make the system more efficient while maintaining personal privacy. Hell, I currently average over 10 hour days at work and so do all of my coworkers and no one complains. They do the job because they feel like they are doing something that helps people not because they want to take away your privacy.

Anyway, my comments are coming from someone actually on the ground doing the job. You don't have to listen to me specifically but America needs to start listening to the people doing the job. If the government and citizens really want to fight terrorism then they need to start listening to the street cops investigators. Not the loud mouth liberal or conservative politicians and academics who have spent most of their life in a classroom or behind a desk. Definitely not the actors and actresses who have suddenly become experts on everything.

"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do." Ben Franklin

[kmcguffee 0]

This is in reply to that huge post you made.

First off, you can't read someone's e-mails without a search warrant (I'm talking e-mail content not subscriber information). A search warrant requires probable cause and must go through a judge supported by an affidavit laying out all of the facts. These facts must add up to probable cause ie a reasonable belief. In a search warrant you must have a reasonable belief that the person committed a crime, that evidence of that crime is located in the search location, and that the evidence of the crime will be in that location at the time of the search. All of the evidence you gave was circumstantial and wouldn't support probable cause. This breaks your chain of events and would be the check in the system that has to remain.

The constitution specifically requires a search warrant before the government gains access to an area with a reasonable expectation of privacy. The TIA will not change this. It is written out quite plainly in the fourth ammendment.

"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do." Ben Franklin

[harryskydives 0]

He is arrested at gunpoint, handcuffed and taken to a secure room, where he is questioned.

That really sucks. Huumm: in iraqi they just touture him and murder his family on similar suspicions

Don't run out of altitude and experience at the same time...

[kallend 2,148]

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He is arrested at gunpoint, handcuffed and taken to a secure room, where he is questioned.

That really sucks. Huumm: in iraqi they just touture him and murder his family on similar suspicions

Do you really think that is an appropriate model for the USA to be compared with? I thought the idea was to live up to the Constitution and Bill of Rights, not just to be better than a despotic regime.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[kallend 2,148]

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This is in reply to that huge post you made.

First off, you can't read someone's e-mails without a search warrant (I'm talking e-mail content not subscriber information). A search warrant requires probable cause and must go through a judge supported by an affidavit laying out all of the facts. These facts must add up to probable cause ie a reasonable belief. In a search warrant you must have a reasonable belief that the person committed a crime, that evidence of that crime is located in the search location, and that the evidence of the crime will be in that location at the time of the search. All of the evidence you gave was circumstantial and wouldn't support probable cause. This breaks your chain of events and would be the check in the system that has to remain.

The constitution specifically requires a search warrant before the government gains access to an area with a reasonable expectation of privacy. The TIA will not change this. It is written out quite plainly in the fourth ammendment.

Did you actually read what Poindexter said? (not that it matters much, since he is a proven liar).

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Shark 0]

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Do you really think that is an appropriate model for the USA to be compared with?

Why not? One poll outside the United States suggests that George W. Bush is as great a threat to world peace as Saddam is.

[billvon 3,116]

>First off, you can't read someone's e-mails without a search warrant . .

A computer can; indeed, many do. That's how spam filters work (for example.) An agent cannot, but he can set up a computer program to analyze patterns seen in the text of emails. Once he has evidence that there is pattern that matches a terrorist pattern a search warrant is easily obtained, so the agent can see for himself.

>All of the evidence you gave was circumstantial and wouldn't support
> probable cause.

Ah, but that's the very purpose of the TIA - to link circumstantial evidence into a cohesive pattern. To use a term that was bandied about a lot a year ago, it "connects the dots."

>The constitution specifically requires a search warrant before the
> government gains access to an area with a reasonable expectation of
> privacy. The TIA will not change this.

The TIA was INTENDED to change this. It analyzes readily available public information (like posts to public boards, credit card purchase patterns, phone call patterns etc) to match against known target profiles. Through extrapolation it can infer things from public records that would otherwise be private (like what people buy at stores, when they buy it, even why they buy it.) It is a first-level tool that allows investigators to cull 230 million possible suspects down to a more manageable number.

Used well, it could help quite a bit in the war on terror. Used incompetently, it could cause much more damage than it prevents. Given that we have someone convicted of lying to congress running it I am not too hopeful, although I am glad it was not fully approved when it was first voted on by congress.

[kallend 2,148]

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>First off, you can't read someone's e-mails without a search warrant . .

A computer can; indeed, many do. That's how spam filters work (for example.) An agent cannot, but he can set up a computer program to analyze patterns seen in the text of emails. Once he has evidence that there is pattern that matches a terrorist pattern a search warrant is easily obtained, so the agent can see for himself.

>All of the evidence you gave was circumstantial and wouldn't support
> probable cause.

Ah, but that's the very purpose of the TIA - to link circumstantial evidence into a cohesive pattern. To use a term that was bandied about a lot a year ago, it "connects the dots."

>The constitution specifically requires a search warrant before the
> government gains access to an area with a reasonable expectation of
> privacy. The TIA will not change this.

The TIA was INTENDED to change this. It analyzes readily available public information (like posts to public boards, credit card purchase patterns, phone call patterns etc) to match against known target profiles. Through extrapolation it can infer things from public records that would otherwise be private (like what people buy at stores, when they buy it, even why they buy it.) It is a first-level tool that allows investigators to cull 230 million possible suspects down to a more manageable number.

Used well, it could help quite a bit in the war on terror. Used incompetently, it could cause much more damage than it prevents. Given that we have someone convicted of lying to congress running it I am not too hopeful, although I am glad it was not fully approved when it was first voted on by congress.

Even if it starts out with the best of intentions, it has the potential for massive abuse.

Some of us are old enough to remember hearing Joe McCarthy at the UnAmerican Activities Committee, and to recall the FBI and CIA abuses of the 50s and 60s, and how Nixon used "confidential" tax data to go after his enemies. Nasty to think what they could do with a mound of information like this.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[chickenhawk420 0]

''the reality that some nations are dedicated to the
dominance of others''

Sorry but isn't yours one of them. You haven't a clue (no offence) but you are to blame as much as them, if you are an american accept some of this.

[Zenister 0]

sounds like the Grand Jury system needs to be reevaluated as well then. I would rather have a 9/11 once a year (wouldnt significantly effect population growth rates in America anyway) than give the goverment anymore access to my personal information than it already has. They level of information you can get now without serious need is to much.

hell i dont want a SSN a Drivers license # or a passport # but the fact that i do have them means the bureaucracy knows more about my life (and everyone elses) than it reasonably should. I'm all for making your job harder and more cumbersome to reduce such scrutiny at the expense of letting a few evildoer slip by. If you have a problem with 10-hour days then get a new job.

Freedom is more important than the perception of security.

____________________________________
Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.