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When Weapons Programs Just Won't Die. . .
Share / Recommend - Comment - Print - Thursday, Feb 23 2006, 11:52PM
(John Poindexter and Ronald Reagan)
National Journal's Shane Harris has discovered that the "Total Information Awareness" program conceived in part under the direction of Iran-Contra tainted former Reagan National Security Advisor John Poindexter was not terminated.
Only the name was.
Instead of TIA (Total Information Awareness), the program was passed off to a public-private host and re-branded "Basketball".
Shane Harris writes:
A controversial counter-terrorism program, which lawmakers halted more than two years ago amid outcries from privacy advocates, was stopped in name only and has quietly continued within the intelligence agency now fending off charges that it has violated the privacy of U.S. citizens.It is no secret that some parts of TIA lived on behind the veil of the classified intelligence budget.
Research under the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program -- which developed technologies to predict terrorist attacks by mining government databases and the personal records of people in the United States -- was moved from the Pentagon's research-and-development agency to another group, which builds technologies primarily for the National Security Agency, according to documents obtained by National Journal and to intelligence sources familiar with the move. The names of key projects were changed, apparently to conceal their identities, but their funding remained intact, often under the same contracts.
It is no secret that some parts of TIA lived on behind the veil of the classified intelligence budget. However, the projects that moved, their new code names, and the agencies that took them over haven't previously been disclosed. Sources aware of the transfers declined to speak on the record for this story because, they said, the identities of the specific programs are classified.
Two of the most important components of the TIA program were moved to the Advanced Research and Development Activity, housed at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Md., documents and sources confirm. One piece was the Information Awareness Prototype System, the core architecture that tied together numerous information extraction, analysis, and dissemination tools developed under TIA. The prototype system included privacy-protection technologies that may have been discontinued or scaled back following the move to ARDA.
At the time the program was discontinued, people thought that it was immoral and just disagreeable to create a system that essentially accumulated "bets" and created a market to attempt to indicate where people most thought the next terror strike would occur.
While I see problems in the approach, I always thought that there were interesting possibilities in an approach that would try and absorb the vast amounts of information that marketplaces develop.
But when a program is killed by Congress, the program should die -- and it didn't.
This reminds me of the old adage about Henry VIII's wives: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.
Perhaps that is in bad taste and no insult meant to Henry's unfortunate spouses, but it just seems to me ridiculous and consistent with Eisenhower's warnings about the military-industrial-complex that a single weapons system can be divorced and beheaded, and in the end, survive and even thrive.
Eugene Jarecki's film, Why We Fight, gets at this. See it.
-- Steve Clemons
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A close readings of the news stories that appeared when Poindexter had to back off several of these programs clearly indicated not termination, but a renaming of the programs.
It's standard operating procedure.
The School of the Americas didn't get closed down, nor did they offer evidence, accountability, or transparency. They just changed the name.
When Richard Perle was found to have a conflict of interest with his position as Chair of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board -- he resisted, then resigned -- from the Chair, but NOT the Board. The conflict of interest is still ongoing. No reaction from "journalists."
McCain's "anti-torture" stink appeared to yield results -- but the final language of the measure allowed Bush to do anything he wants.
Standard operating procedure. SOP for torture; SOP for corruption; SOP for TIA and Big Brother; SOP for training (& directing, btw) South American dictators & death squads; SOP for inversion of American law & principle.
See a pattern, Steve?
The national security state -- and its inherent secrecy -- is eating and has eaten itself alive. These twin fetishes have destroyed that which they claimed to save. We are all less secure as a result. The justifications for government have been turned on their head. The first job of government is to ... " give me liberty, or give me death." When in the course of human events has come round once again, full circle.
I saw Why We Fight in Dupont Circle in Washington, DC.
I highly highly recommend it.
It's a thinker.
Enjoy!
Capital Hill Blue reported this two years ago.
Good to see that it is finally getter broader play, though.
This Hydra thrives on the false security of ritual beheading.
More from the infotech edition of Night of the Living Military-Industrial Dead . . .
This (about Topsail) is from Newsweek a couple of weeks ago, but was web-only:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11238800/site/newsweek/print/1/displaymode/1098/
And this (from the following day) concerns another apparent TIA spinoff, called ADVISE:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0209/p01s02-uspo.html
What is truly astounding about this, when viewed in the light of other events in the past 2-3 years, is that members of Congress appear to have become totally irrelevant to any meaningful participation in the democratic process.
This administration has marginalized them, continually diverted or thwarted them from carrying out any of their investigatory powers. and when told they cannot do something such as mass wiretapping or continuing the Total Information program, they simply go ahead and do it anyway on grounds that the President can do whatever he wants.
this is truly apalling and Congress is largely complicit in the process.
"While I see problems in the approach, I always thought that there were interesting possibilities in an approach that would try and absorb the vast amounts of information that marketplaces develop."
Please explain the above. This is a sentence as one can find in a management or weather report: utterly meaningless or always true.
However, there's a moral end to the story: " (...) , but it just seems to me ridiculous and consistent with Eisenhower's warnings about the military-industrial-complex that a single weapons system can be divorced and beheaded, and in the end, survive and even thrive."
Meaning if the US Congress decides to whatever undertaking, due process has been followed and all ends well. So the first and second quote can be deemed a morally empty statement.
Last time the rest of the world had a good look at the workings of the US Congress it approved a bogus war, proclaimed virtually every international agreement meaningless and closed its eyes to torture on behalf of a democracy.
Yet due process had been, has been and will be followed. Legalism is a nice position when you havve nothing to say.
Basketball has an overwhelming collection of web traffic saying Bush and his henchmen should all be executed for the treason of lying our country into an unnecessary, illegal and immoral war, not to mention being directly responsible for the deaths of 2300+ US soldiers, 10,000 maimings of our soldiers, and 20,000+ soldiers with deep psychlogical problems as a result of The Evil Ones' treason.
Some say Bush and his henchman should be beheaded with a guillotine! Imagine that!
I think they should only be imprisoned for life in Spandau, but maybe I'm a pussy.
Data Mining is an imprecise statistical and mathematical tool. It can provide information on broad subjects or targets, but has been known to be prone to mismatching the who, what, when, where.
It was mentioned on the CBS show, Numbers.
If they need data lets all* give it to them... every single American has an obigation to use this system wisely. After all our tax dollars funded it. Every American should pick up their phone today and say: Bomb, Osama, Taleban, Impeach, I am a Patriot that believes in the Constitution.... then lets see what happens?
One can read between the lines of the very sales oriented writing here & see what sort of systems are being used across military operations
Of course it can be applied to any type of information; note the rapid (short time frame) implementation
"The future will be a struggle between huge competing systems of psychopathology." - J. G. Ballard
steve wrote:
"While I see problems in the approach, I always thought that there were interesting possibilities in an approach that would try and absorb the vast amounts of information that marketplaces develop."
to which marc replied:
"Please explain the above. This is a sentence as one can find in a management or weather report: utterly meaningless or always true."
I believe you might misunderstand the nature of the program Steve described that proposed a market for revealing threats, where presumably "insiders" might be be willing to capitalize on their knowledge of impeading threats. Some suggested that selling airline stocks short before 9/11, (betting that future stock value would decline) was evidence that there might already exist such a market, and that it yielded predictive information.
Those believing themselves to have superior information "might" be willing to reveal that information under the incentive of personal financial gain. Of course they might also suspect a sting, and see concsequences to revealing that knowledge. While the benefit of misdirecting "might" likewise exceed the value of that incentive, it seems to me nevertheless an empirical question, and neither "meainingless"or always "true". While there are all sorts of market fixing possible, including the moral hazard of creating threats were none had existed, i would not be so instantaneously dismissive of that proposal.
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