| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Black Elk" |
| Date: |
23 Dec 2005 07:37:22 PM |
| Object: |
Neo-fascistActivism: An epidemic of illegal surveillance. |
The Pentagon Breaks the Law
The National Security Agency story has pushed military spying on anti-war
groups off the front pages, and the Pentagon appears to have seized upon
administrative error to explain away its slide into domestic spying.
The Department of Defense now says that analysts may not have followed the
law and its own guidelines that require the purging of information collected
on U.S. persons after 90 days. The law states that if no connection is made
between named persons and foreign governments or transnational terrorist
organizations or illegal activity, U.S. persons have a right to their
privacy and information about them must be deleted.
Thanks to RL, I now know that the database of "suspicious incidents" in the
United States first revealed by NBC Nightly News last Tuesday and subject of
my blog last week is the Joint Protection Enterprise Network (JPEN)
database, an intelligence and law enforcement sharing system managed by the
Defense Department's Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA).
What is clear about JPEN is that the military is not inadvertently keeping
information on U.S. persons. It is violating the law. And what is more, it
even wants to do it more.
Follow-up reporting on the Pentagon spying story -- both by this newspaper
and by the New York Times -- mistakenly refers to the suspicious incidents
database that I obtained for the time period July 2004-May 2005 as the TALON
database, for the Threat and Local Observation Notice reporting system.
TALON, according to the Pentagon, is merely a non-threatening compilation of
"unfiltered information."
The data on incidents is used "to estimate possible threats," DOD says. "It
is in effect, the place where DOD initially stores "dots," which if
validated, might later be connected before an attack occurs," the department
says in a written statement prepared for reporters.
"Under existing procedures, a "dot" of information that is not validated as
threatening must be removed from the TALON system."
But JPEN is more than just a compilation of TALON's. It is a near real-time
sharing system of raw non-validated force protection information among
Department of Defense organizations and installations. Feeding into JPEN are
intelligence, law enforcement, counterintelligence, and security reports,
TALONs as well as other reports.
JPEN shares this information at all levels, from military police guarding
entry gates at military bases to terrorism warning watch standers at the
Defense Intelligence Agency. JPEN began as a pilot project in the
Washington, D.C. area and was initially fielded in June 2003.
Under the provisions of the Privacy Act of 1974 (5 U.S.C. 552a), the
military can maintain information on specific individuals (name of
individual or other personal identifiers such as Social Security number or
driver's license number) in the JPEN database system for 90 days. JPEN then
is supposed to purge all Privacy Act information after 90 days, unless it is
part of an ongoing investigation.
From the beginning of JPEN, system designers have attempted to balance their
task of collecting and retaining information of intelligence and warning
value with the longstanding "intelligence oversight" and Privacy Act
restrictions. According to a JPEN classified briefing obtained by this
blogger, the 90-day "data content limit . creates issues for long-term
correlation and analysis."
In other words, how can the military connect the dots if it is restricted to
a 90-day deadline? According to the briefing the NORTHCOM says it will
"continue to purge required information IAW [in accordance with] the law"
but it is also working "privacy act restrictions with legal office to retain
information previously subject to purging."
Evidently though, the JPEN maintainers didn't abide by the law, and the
collectors feeding TALON and other reports into the system overreached in
monitoring and retaining information on anti-war and anti-military
organizations of no conceivable threat.
The managers of JPEN are hardly being inadvertent about either the 90-day
restriction or the intentional collection of information on U.S. persons.
So far, it appears that they have broken the law. And what is more, they are
agitating internally to find ways of circumventing the legal restrictions.
http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2005/12/the_pentagon_br.html
--
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the
country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag
the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a
parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can
always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have
to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for
lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
-- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.htm
--
The fair use of a copyrighted work:
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml.
.
|
|
| User: "Werner Hetzner" |
|
| Title: Re: Neo-fascistActivism: An epidemic of illegal surveillance. |
26 Dec 2005 10:24:10 PM |
|
|
Black Elk wrote:
The Pentagon Breaks the Law
The National Security Agency story has pushed military spying on anti-war
groups off the front pages, and the Pentagon appears to have seized upon
administrative error to explain away its slide into domestic spying.
...
see
http://1marketsquare.com/CapLP/PatriotAct.shtml
.
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
