World>Terrorism & Security
posted February 23, 2004, updated 12:00 p.m.

US still funding powerful data mining tools

Total Information Awareness projects transferred to other agencies.

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

The Associated Press reports that the US government is still financing research to create powerful software tools that could mine millions of public and private records for information about terrorists, despite last year's controversy over how easily and how often the software might implicate people who have nothing to do with terrorism.

Although Congress eliminated funding for the original project, known as the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program and run by Iran-Contragate figure retired Adm. John Poindexter, AP reports, lawmakers left undisturbed a separate but similar $64 million research program run by a little-known US government office called Advanced Research and Development Activity (ARDA) that has used some of the same researchers as Mr. Poindexter's program. ARDA, is so secretive it's not listed in the 684-page official compilation of federal departments, agencies and offices, reports Tech Central. ARDA researches and develops computer software and equipment to "intercept and analyze foreign intelligence that is transmitted electronically – and to protect the US methods used to obtain and communicate it."

"The whole congressional action looks like a shell game," said Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, which tracks work by US intelligence agencies. "There may be enough of a difference for them to claim TIA was terminated while for all practical purposes the identical work is continuing."

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Earlier this month, Wired News reported that the US Defense Department's research arm, Darpa canceled its so-called LifeLog project, which was designed to build a database that could track a person's entire existence. The program's supporters said LifeLog would have created a near-perfect digital memory/profile, giving its users computerized assistants with an almost flawless recall of what they had done in the past. But civil libertarians jumped on the project, saying it could turn into the "ultimate tool for profiling potential enemies of the state."

"I've always thought (LifeLog) would be the third program (after TIA and FutureMap) that could raise eyebrows if they didn't make it clear how privacy concerns would be met," said Peter Harsha, director of government affairs for the Computing Research Association. "Darpa's pretty gun-shy now," added Lee Tien, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has been critical of many agency efforts. "After TIA, they discovered they weren't ready to deal with the firestorm of criticism."

WiredNews also reports, however, that the Pentagon research will likely be funded under some other title. "I can't imagine Darpa 'dropping out' of such a key research area," says David Karger of MIT.

The Daily Yomiuri of Japan outlines all the various database models that the Pentagon and others would like to create in order to target terrorists.

And another controversial database is Matrix, which is short for Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange. AP reports that by combining state records with databases owned by Seisint Inc., a private company, Matrix details the property, boats and Internet domains people own, their address history, utility connections, bankruptcies, liens and business filings, according to an August report by the Georgia state Office of Homeland Security. The St. Petersburg Times reports that Matrix is being further developed with a $4-million grant from the Justice Department and the promise of another $8-million from the Department of Homeland Security. Matrix is supposed to search behavior patterns to look for indications of criminal behavior.

Matrix is currently being used by states such as Florida and New York, and is funded by the US Department of Homeland Security. But AP reports that privacy advocates at the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) argue that Matrix is a very ominous piece of technology.

"This is a major program with very large ambitions, and it needs to be publicly examined. We shouldn't be forced to read tea leaves," said Barry Steinhardt, who heads the ACLU's technology and liberty program ... "This is the state version of TIA," Steinhardt said, referring to the Pentagon's Terrorism Information Awareness program, which was shelved last year after a public uproar and a Congressional inquiry.

The TIA aimed to spot patterns in a much bigger pool of data than Matrix possesses, reports AP, and people involved in Matrix at Seisint Inc. reject any comparison. They say Matrix is not a surveillance tool, but rather a revved-up search engine.

Meanwhile, United Press International reports that the Department of Homeland Security's privacy commissioner, Nuala O'Conner Kelly, says that employees of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) acted " outside the spirit of the Privacy Act," in 2002 when they facilitated the transfer of 1.5 million passenger records from the budget airline JetBlue to a defense contractor, but did not break the law, according to the official Kelly report published Friday.

Ms. Kelly found that there was "no violation of the Privacy Act because no data was brought into the control of the Transportation Security Administration." She did tell reporters, however, that without the efforts of six TSA employees, the records would not have been transferred. Kelly did not comment if any other agency had violated the Privacy Act.

The controversy started when Torch Concepts approached the Pentagon in October 2001 and offered to try and develop data mining and analysis techniques to detect potential terrorists by sifting large numbers of personal records, according to UPI. In April 2002, with the assistance of the TSA officials, Torch received data on 1.5 million JetBlue passengers. "There certainly appears to have been a breach of the Privacy Act," said Lara Flint, staff counsel to the Center for Democracy and Technology $#8211; a privacy and civil rights pressure group. "There should have been a notice (of creation of a system of records) published." Information Week reports that the US Senate has also launched an investigation into the role TSA played in compelling JetBlue to provide Torch Concepts with the passenger information.

Kelly's report about the way the TSA handled the personal information of passengers will not help create any more confidence in the Department of Homeland Security's controversial plan to launch its Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening program, known as CAPPS II. CAPPS is designed to help identify air passenger security risks. But a recent report from Congress's General Accounting Office says that CAPPS has a long way to go to meet Congressional mandates that protect privacy and ensure data accuracy. CAPPS failed seven of eight requirements that Congress had mandated before the program can be provided with any more federal money.

A recent survey, the Government Privacy Trust Survey, showed that many Americans don't trust agencies like the Department of Justice, the CIA or Office of the Attorney General with protecting their privacy. But the study's authors said that doesn't mean these agencies are doing anything wrong, but that they need to do a better job of letting people know about the privacy protections that are currently in place.