"Privacy protecting programs killed
By Michael J. Sniffen, Associated Press
WASHINGTON ? Two cutting-edge computer projects designed to preserve the privacy of Americans were quietly killed while Congress was restricting Pentagon data-gathering research in a widely publicized effort to protect innocent citizens from futuristic anti-terrorism tools.

As a result, the government is quietly pressing ahead with research into high-powered computer data-mining technology without the two most advanced privacy protections developed to police those terror-fighting tools.

"It's very inconsistent what they've done," said Teresa Lunt of the Palo Alto Research Center, head of one of the two government-funded privacy projects eliminated last fall.

Even members of Congress like Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who led the fight to restrict the Pentagon terrorism research, remain uncertain about the nature of the research or the safeguards. He won a temporary ban on using the tools against Americans on U.S. soil but wants to require the administration to give Congress a full description of all its data-mining research.

"We feel Congress is not getting enough information about who is undertaking this research and where it's headed and how they intend to protect the civil liberties of Americans," said Chris Fitzgerald, Wyden's spokesman."

The privacy projects were small parts of the Pentagon's Terrorism Information Awareness research.

The project was the brainchild of retired Adm. John Poindexter, who was driven from the Reagan administration in 1986 over the Iran-Contra scandal. Some 15 years later, he was summoned back by the Bush administration to develop data-mining tools for the fight against terrorism.

Poindexter's new software tools, far more powerful than existing commercial products, would have allowed government agents to quickly scan the private commercial transactions and personal health records of millions of Americans and foreigners for telltale signs of terrorist activity.

Partly to appease critics, Poindexter also was developing two privacy tools that would have concealed names on records during the scans. Only if agents discovered concrete evidence of terrorist activities would they have been permitted to learn the identities of the people whose records aroused suspicion.

One privacy project worked with Poindexter's Genisys program, which scanned government and commercial records for terrorist planning. The other was part of his Bio-ALIRT program, which scanned private health records for evidence of biological attacks.

Late last year, Congress closed Poindexter's office in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, in response to the uproar over its impact on privacy.

But Congress allowed some Poindexter projects, including some data-mining research, to be transferred to intelligence agencies. Congress also left intact similar data-mining research begun in the fall of 2002 by the Advanced Research and Development Activity, or ARDA, a little-known office that works on behalf of U.S. intelligence.

The research sponsored by ARDA, called Novel Intelligence from Massive Data, is so similar to some work done for Poindexter that Lunt offered to adapt her privacy protection software. ARDA and other agencies weren't interested because Congress had killed the original projects.

"When I went to talk to them, ARDA made clear they don't want to get into any area Congress doesn't want to fund," Lunt said.

It's not clear what, if any, privacy research is being done by ARDA or by the surviving remnants of Poindexter's program.

Last fall's Intelligence Authorization Act approved continued research on the type of powerful data-mining Poindexter envisioned but said "the policies and procedures necessary to safeguard individual liberties and privacy should occur concurrently with the development of these analytic tools, not as an afterthought."

ARDA said it obeys all privacy laws and hasn't given its researchers any government or private data, but it declined to say whether it is sponsoring any research on privacy protection.

Lunt, a former DARPA program manager, was developing privacy protection software for Poindexter's Genisys program. Her software shielded identities in the records the government reviewed, restricted each intelligence analyst to only the data he or she was authorized to see and created a permanent record to track cheaters.

Professor LaTanya Sweeney of Carnegie Mellon University was the principal researcher developing privacy protections for the Bio-ALIRT project. An early version of Bio-ALIRT was used to help protect President Bush's 2001 inauguration and the 2002 Olympics before Sweeney developed her privacy software.

She also presented her work last fall to officials of various agencies and said she was told they "might want to continue the work. But they came through with zero dollars."


more at www.usatoday.com

This really is a good article and I would urge everyone to read the full article.

What is America?

I was taught to be proud to live in a free country. I was taught to take pride in my revolutionary forefathers and the rights they bestowed upon us in the constitution. I was taught to respect police and the government. I was taught not to ask, but to obey.

I learned not to trust what I'm taught. I learned that we do not live in a free country, and every freedom we enjoy must be constantly fought for or else it will be lost. I learned that although we claim our forefathers are hero's while they tossed tea into the Boston harbor in protest, we are now beaten and pepper sprayed for holding signs and chanting against globalization. I learned not to respect people who are told what to do and perpetrate unjust actions because they have a badge. I learned not to respect a government that is more concerned with profit margins than children's lives. I learned never to obey, and never stop asking.

We live in a very dangerious time now. We're spoon fed rhetoric about how dangerous terrorists are to us, but infact, it's our own government that's the most dangerous. I'm not scared of some Saudi 4000 miles away crashing a plane into my house or spraying my neighborhood with mustard gas. I'm afraid that the few freedoms we are privledged enough to have, are being shredded.

We've all heard the phrase "There's nothing to fear but fear itself" and that is the most truthful thing anyone has ever said. It is fear that lets things like our privacy and constitutional rights get taken away from us. It's fear that they use to justify their actions.

Personally I am not going to live afraid and I am not going to live under the boot of someone who thinks they know what's good for me.

What is America?

America is intimidation. America is profit margins. America is imperialistic. America is selfish. America is controling. America is bigotry. Americans are complacent.

Proud to be an American?

Not anymore.

Information is power.....

Information is power.....

combined with control over its distribution and its damn near absolute.

"We feel Congress is not getting enough information about who is undertaking this research and where it's headed and how they intend to protect the civil liberties of Americans,"

*whips out trusty laser pointer* i would like to direct your attention to "who is undertaking this reasearch and where it is headed"

may i ask the obvious rhetorical question? is it the content industry lap dogs and is it going straight into the hands of the content industries' enforcement arms?

Wow.... negatyve.... what you said was probably the most powerful statement I have heard on this website so far.

I am telling you.... a one world government is just around the corner.

I am not sure "government" is the proper term for it Max-Stone... perhaps "One World Corporation" is more correct. It would serve the Beast more to keep the individual governments around a few more decades.



Shmoo, of Electric Gypsy
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"What is America?

I was taught to be proud to live in a free country. I was taught to take pride in my revolutionary forefathers and the rights they bestowed upon us in the constitution. I was taught to respect police and the government. I was taught not to ask, but to obey.

I learned not to trust what I'm taught. I learned that we do not live in a free country, and every freedom we enjoy must be constantly fought for or else it will be lost. I learned that although..................."

That's intense and unfortunatly too true.

"I'm afraid that the few freedoms we are privledged enough to have, are being shredded."

Sorry buddy, but that's one more thing you need to unlearn. We are not priveledged to have our freedoms. Freedoms are (DAMNIT, I can't remember the word...), they cannot be touched, they cannot be taken away, freedom is our birthright, as a species.

Thanks for the comments.

However, freedom is not OUR birthright, it is A birthright, regardless of where you're born, your race, religion, ect. And it is a privledge in America, if you live here and are on this site, then you should be well aware of the steps taken by the government to limit our freedom, or at least make it possible to limit our freedom if our freedom gets in their way.

freedom is such an overused term. it doesnt exist and it never has within the common man. the one who we give the power to has freedom. from the greats to the Mr.Presidents freedom was never betowed upon us. Bush is proud to say he doesnt read the paper. look at that for the only person who has freedom in this country.

when we cut off our inferiority to england that we make us a free country. it made it so we can control our own gov't. now it has turned the other way around. now every olympic year they persuade what they can do for us as oppose what they will do to us.

there is no such thing as freedom
lik Neo said "It's all another system of control."

Well, it could be worse:
Saudi 'liberal reformers' arrested
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/03/16/saudi.arrests/index.html
...or maybe that's the direction we are heading.

As said by Purfus and Roulduke1: Information is Power.

I agree totally.

But who controls that Power?

If u read between lines, every single attempt made by the US government in the last year has been towards government controlling the flow of information.

What is a democracy? Is a government system with many features, but its main perk is that control and power is DISTRIBUTED in several organizations that regulate themselves.

What is a monarchy? Is a government system where the person in charge(aka King) does AS HE PLEASES because all the power is invested in him alone. U can have a gtreat an just king by ruler or a Hitler imitation of a King, but no one will ever stop him because he is king.

LISTEN PEOPLE: THE ONLY WAY NOT TO BECOME A DE-FACTO MONARCHY IS THAT INFORMATION IS SHARED WITH PEOPLE, SO THAT THE POWER ITSELF IS SHARED.

To achieve that these things MUST be done:

* Transparent government administration: people should be able to audit several government actions and policies and vote on them directly.

* Protecting the privacy while promoting security. If the government has to use data mining on my company to see if i am terrorist, then thats not acceptable because its gaining access to an information that IT IS NOT MEANT TO HAVE and can wreck havoc with it if it pleases to do so.

* Don´t restrict innovation, innovate further:
If the RIAA becomes obsolete by the use of new technology, then the RIAA must change rather than the new tech regulated and killed. If not is like sinking a big transatlantic just because my raft company wants to charge a million dollar a ticket.(copyright issues aside). We all know that fans as myself WILL pay dearly to go to the live shows of artists.... they could litteraly raise the concert tickets a bit and live of them while distributing songs for a small price in the internet if they were no record companies involved. The FCC regulations on video "broadcast flag" is just another example on how OUR PRIVACY and OUR RIGHTS as consumers are being violated outright. I will never buy a broadcast flagged tv or a DRMized anything.... i prefer a good book or even my imagination, thankx.

If we don´t fight for all those things... well we could just crown King George Bush(or Kerry) the 2nd and see how just and fair he is when he rules us all with absolute powers.

Btw... a one world corporation as government... will eventually become reality.

But can we trust the corporation´s morale and caring for the wellfare of all? What if M$ ruled our lives, or the RIAA itself? What laws would it pass in other turfs as the criminal legal turf for example?

"Corporations are the devil of the future" - Bubblegum Crisis Anime