12 ms·

U.S. Terrorism Agency to Tap a Vast Database of Citizens

55 points by jalanco 14y ago

sologoub 14y ago
This is so typical - a government agency screws up, so it blames the fact that it didn't have enough powers, and does another power grab: "However, Mr. Abdulmutallab and his underwear did alter U.S. intelligence-gathering. A Senate investigation revealed that NCTC had received information about him but had failed to query other government databases about him. In a scathing finding, the Senate report said, "the NCTC was not organized adequately to fulfill its missions." "This was not a failure to collect or share intelligence," said John Brennan, the president's chief counterterrorism adviser, at a White House press conference in January 2010. "It was a failure to connect and integrate and understand the intelligence we had."" From what I'm reading here, this person would have been within the jurisdiction of the previous rules as a person connected with terror activities. The agency just failed to connect the dots. If I recall recall correctly, the guys own father had contacted US Embassy to tell them that his son is trying to get involved with terrorists... The solution to this problem seems to be better data interconnection between agencies, in order to ensure that as much detail about identified threats is available. I don't see how have more data about a much broader set of citizens is going to help... if anything, it's going to make the identification process more complex.
jalanco 14y ago
A couple of key paragraphs: "Now, NCTC [National Counterterrorism Center] can copy entire government databases—flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited. Data about Americans 'reasonably believed to constitute terrorism information' may be permanently retained. "The changes also allow databases of U.S. civilian information to be given to foreign governments for analysis of their own. In effect, U.S. and foreign governments would be using the information to look for clues that people might commit future crimes."
- csense 14y ago
  > The changes also allow databases of U.S. civilian information to be given to foreign governments for analysis of their own. What forces those foreign governments to comply with the safeguards of US law? Especially if when they hand over the data, the feds say "do what you need to do to tell us what we need to know (wink wink)". It's nothing less than "extraordinary rendition" for data.
dragonbonheur 14y ago
Bin Laden won the war on terror. They're all scared now. Even China does not monitor its own citizens like that. Soon Chinese citizens will enjoy more freedom and privacy than western citizens.
- mikegioia 14y ago
  Now, NCTC can copy entire government databases—flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. You don't think China has this info?
  - dragonbonheur 14y ago
    Chinese don't care what their own citizens do as long as they don't blow things up (or out of proportion). People should note that while in the Western world technology has increased the powers of the wealthy minority, in the east it's the people that have learned to harness it. The Chinese "human flesh search" is notorious for bringing corrupt officials to justice and to find lost children. In the west it's just iSheep staring blankly into their shiny iDevices and not giving a rat's ass about anything.
    - dragonbonheur 14y ago
      Some people just can't stand the truth and downvote...
      - dragonbonheur 14y ago
        Apparently writing iSheep anywhere on Hacker News is really offensive... COME ON! KILL THAT KARMA! :D
- tptacek 14y ago
  Sure. I mean, their local police are allowed to arrest people and send them to "Reeducation Through Labor" camps for 1-3 years without trial. But sure, the US, China, same thing.
jamesmcn 14y ago
If you haven't committed a crime how could you possibly need privacy, comrade?
- dragonbonheur 14y ago
  You really do enjoy having lots of people watch your sex tapes, or know about your financial situation or about how you and your parents haven't been talking for so many years or knowing that your girlfriend/wife dated and slept with crowd of men before meeting you, huh?
  - jamesmcn 14y ago
    (psst: might want to have your sarcasm detector recalibrated, it appears to be giving erroneous readings)
    - mindcrime 14y ago
      (psst: text only communication is a really shitty way to convey sarcasm. Sarcasm on the Internet is fundamentally Broken)
EliRivers 14y ago
At risk of stating the obvious, the false positive rate will create a vast number of innocent citizens flagged for further investigation. This automated flagging will overwhelm the human investigators, creating a situation in which terrorists find it easier to hide and operate amongst the citizenry, with the added feature that innocent citizens swept up will become truculent and less likely to cooperate. Net result; the US government makes terrorism easier, at vast expense to the US taxpayer.
mcantelon 14y ago
No mention in this article (that I saw) that points out that this data is also used to find new candidates for the extrajudicial "kill list" using the "disposition matrix": >the "disposition matrix" has been developed and will be overseen by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). One of its purposes is "to augment" the "separate but overlapping kill lists" maintained by the CIA and the Pentagon http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/24/obama-terrorism-kill-list http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/24/obama-te... There's been a slow, steady consolidation of state power post-9/11, including the establishment of NORTHCOM: a command post for war in North America. It seems like they're worried about domestic insurgence rather than conventional terrorism.
suprgeek 14y ago
A very telling line in the Article - "The guidelines provide rigorous oversight to protect the information that we have, for authorized and narrow purposes," said Alexander Joel, Civil Liberties Protection Officer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence" A "guideline" is supposed to provide rigorous oversight...how many guidelines have you heard of that provide rigorous Anything? Basically the government wants to be able to Datamine every single database within their control for anything suspicious. Unfortunately the definition of "suspicious activity" can be elastic enough to be almost anything. Occupy Wallstreet? - suspicious Protest against Oil drilling - suspicious Blog post criticizing NY police "stop & frisk" - suspicious Criticize the Feds for overstepping on something - suspicious Sad - we are sleep waking into the Total information awareness state. The terrorists attacks have worked - they have destroyed the very values that America was built on
- dragonbonheur 14y ago
  Add to it that paying with cash is suspicious and should be reported immediately. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/02/14/fbi-perfect-terrorist-coffee-cash_n_1276494.html http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/02/14/fbi-perfect-terro...
  - dr_doom 14y ago
    If you are a regular “cash customer” of a restaurant, you get treated like a king. Good inside move.
    - epoxyhockey 14y ago
      If you pay cash anywhere, not only are you treated like a king, but you will get a nice discount due to the vendor not having to pay CC processing fees (at the least). I highly recommend that frugal HN'ers explore this phenomenon.
pge 14y ago
I'm guessing they would prefer to be referenced as a "Counterterrorism Agency" rather than a "Terrorism Agency"...

55 points by jalanco 14y ago

This is so typical - a government agency screws up, so it blames the fact that it didn't have enough powers, and does another power grab: "However, Mr. Abdulmutallab and his underwear did alter U.S. intelligence-gathering. A Senate investigation revealed that NCTC had received information about him but had failed to query other government databases about him. In a scathing finding, the Senate report said, "the NCTC was not organized adequately to fulfill its missions." "This was not a failure to collect or share intelligence," said John Brennan, the president's chief counterterrorism adviser, at a White House press conference in January 2010. "It was a failure to connect and integrate and understand the intelligence we had."" From what I'm reading here, this person would have been within the jurisdiction of the previous rules as a person connected with terror activities. The agency just failed to connect the dots. If I recall recall correctly, the guys own father had contacted US Embassy to tell them that his son is trying to get involved with terrorists... The solution to this problem seems to be better data interconnection between agencies, in order to ensure that as much detail about identified threats is available. I don't see how have more data about a much broader set of citizens is going to help... if anything, it's going to make the identification process more complex.

jalanco 14y ago

A couple of key paragraphs: "Now, NCTC [National Counterterrorism Center] can copy entire government databases—flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited. Data about Americans 'reasonably believed to constitute terrorism information' may be permanently retained. "The changes also allow databases of U.S. civilian information to be given to foreign governments for analysis of their own. In effect, U.S. and foreign governments would be using the information to look for clues that people might commit future crimes."

csense 14y ago
> The changes also allow databases of U.S. civilian information to be given to foreign governments for analysis of their own. What forces those foreign governments to comply with the safeguards of US law? Especially if when they hand over the data, the feds say "do what you need to do to tell us what we need to know (wink wink)". It's nothing less than "extraordinary rendition" for data.

dragonbonheur 14y ago

Bin Laden won the war on terror. They're all scared now. Even China does not monitor its own citizens like that. Soon Chinese citizens will enjoy more freedom and privacy than western citizens.

mikegioia 14y ago
Now, NCTC can copy entire government databases—flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. You don't think China has this info?
- dragonbonheur 14y ago
  Chinese don't care what their own citizens do as long as they don't blow things up (or out of proportion). People should note that while in the Western world technology has increased the powers of the wealthy minority, in the east it's the people that have learned to harness it. The Chinese "human flesh search" is notorious for bringing corrupt officials to justice and to find lost children. In the west it's just iSheep staring blankly into their shiny iDevices and not giving a rat's ass about anything.
  - dragonbonheur 14y ago
    Some people just can't stand the truth and downvote...
    - dragonbonheur 14y ago
      Apparently writing iSheep anywhere on Hacker News is really offensive... COME ON! KILL THAT KARMA! :D
tptacek 14y ago
Sure. I mean, their local police are allowed to arrest people and send them to "Reeducation Through Labor" camps for 1-3 years without trial. But sure, the US, China, same thing.

jamesmcn 14y ago

If you haven't committed a crime how could you possibly need privacy, comrade?

dragonbonheur 14y ago
You really do enjoy having lots of people watch your sex tapes, or know about your financial situation or about how you and your parents haven't been talking for so many years or knowing that your girlfriend/wife dated and slept with crowd of men before meeting you, huh?
- jamesmcn 14y ago
  (psst: might want to have your sarcasm detector recalibrated, it appears to be giving erroneous readings)
  - mindcrime 14y ago
    (psst: text only communication is a really shitty way to convey sarcasm. Sarcasm on the Internet is fundamentally Broken)

EliRivers 14y ago

At risk of stating the obvious, the false positive rate will create a vast number of innocent citizens flagged for further investigation. This automated flagging will overwhelm the human investigators, creating a situation in which terrorists find it easier to hide and operate amongst the citizenry, with the added feature that innocent citizens swept up will become truculent and less likely to cooperate. Net result; the US government makes terrorism easier, at vast expense to the US taxpayer.

mcantelon 14y ago

No mention in this article (that I saw) that points out that this data is also used to find new candidates for the extrajudicial "kill list" using the "disposition matrix": >the "disposition matrix" has been developed and will be overseen by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). One of its purposes is "to augment" the "separate but overlapping kill lists" maintained by the CIA and the Pentagon http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/24/obama-terrorism-kill-list http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/24/obama-te... There's been a slow, steady consolidation of state power post-9/11, including the establishment of NORTHCOM: a command post for war in North America. It seems like they're worried about domestic insurgence rather than conventional terrorism.

suprgeek 14y ago

A very telling line in the Article - "The guidelines provide rigorous oversight to protect the information that we have, for authorized and narrow purposes," said Alexander Joel, Civil Liberties Protection Officer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence" A "guideline" is supposed to provide rigorous oversight...how many guidelines have you heard of that provide rigorous Anything? Basically the government wants to be able to Datamine every single database within their control for anything suspicious. Unfortunately the definition of "suspicious activity" can be elastic enough to be almost anything. Occupy Wallstreet? - suspicious Protest against Oil drilling - suspicious Blog post criticizing NY police "stop & frisk" - suspicious Criticize the Feds for overstepping on something - suspicious Sad - we are sleep waking into the Total information awareness state. The terrorists attacks have worked - they have destroyed the very values that America was built on

dragonbonheur 14y ago
Add to it that paying with cash is suspicious and should be reported immediately. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/02/14/fbi-perfect-terrorist-coffee-cash_n_1276494.html http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/02/14/fbi-perfect-terro...
- dr_doom 14y ago
  If you are a regular “cash customer” of a restaurant, you get treated like a king. Good inside move.
  - epoxyhockey 14y ago
    If you pay cash anywhere, not only are you treated like a king, but you will get a nice discount due to the vendor not having to pay CC processing fees (at the least). I highly recommend that frugal HN'ers explore this phenomenon.

pge 14y ago

I'm guessing they would prefer to be referenced as a "Counterterrorism Agency" rather than a "Terrorism Agency"...