[IP] Senate Wants Database Dragnet
Senate Wants Database Dragnet By Ryan Singel
Oct. 06, 2004 PT
Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,65242,00.html
The Senate could pass a bill as early as Wednesday evening that would
let government counter-terrorist investigators instantly query a
massive system of interconnected commercial and government databases
that hold billions of records on Americans.
The proposed network is based on the Markle Foundation Task Force's
December 2003 report, which envisioned a system that would allow FBI
and CIA agents, as well as police officers and some companies, to
quickly search intelligence, criminal and commercial databases. The
proposal is so radical, the bill allocates $50 million just to fund the
system's specifications and privacy policies.
The Senate will likely have its final vote on the bill, sponsored by
Joseph Lieberman (D-Connecticut) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), Wednesday
night. The draft of the bill was based on recommendations of the
so-called 9/11 Commission, which investigated the United States' lapse
in intelligence and security procedures prior to the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks.
To prevent abuses of the system, the Markle task force recommended
anonymized technology, graduated levels of permission-based access and
automated auditing software constantly hunting for abuses.
An appendix to the report went so far as to suggest that the system
should "identify known associates of the terrorist suspect, within 30
seconds, using shared addressees, records of phone calls to and from
the suspect's phone, e-mails to and from the suspect's accounts,
financial transactions, travel history and reservations, and common
memberships in organizations, including (with appropriate safeguards)
religious and expressive organizations."
But task force member James X. Dempsey, director of the Center for
Democracy & Technology, says the commercial records involved are more
limited public records, such as home ownership data, not information
about what mosque someone belongs to.
He said he believes it's "absurd" to prohibit the FBI from using a
commercial database like ChoicePoint to find a suspected terrorist's
home address (though the FBI currently can and does do this). On the
other hand, he asked, "Should they be able to go to ChoicePoint and ask
for all the subscribers to Gun Owners Monthly? No, I don't think so."
The proposed network would not look for patterns in data warehouses to
attempt to detect terrorist activities, Dempsey said. Instead, an
investigator would start with a name and the system would try to see
what information is known about that person.
But critics say the Senate is moving too fast and the network could
infringe on civil liberties. Lawmakers are taking a "boil the ocean"
approach, according to Robert Griffin, president of Knowledge
Computing. His company runs Coplink, a widely used system for linking
law enforcement databases. Despite being a supporter of increased
information sharing, Griffin criticized the proposal for trying too
much too soon and relying too heavily on commercial data.
"The next Mohammed Atta is not going to be found in commercial
databases," Griffin said, referring to the tactical leader of the 9/11
attacks. "We are going to stop him running a red light somewhere, and
we are going to run relationships associations with this guy and we are
going to say, gee, you have things in common with guys on watch lists.
That's how you are going to find the guy -- not because he has bad
credit."
Civil liberties lawyer Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
accused Congress of "institutional laziness" for not holding hearings
on the proposal to hear the perspectives of advocates for consumers or
battered women. Tien also argued that a widespread lack of privacy and
due process protections would make data sharing dangerous.
"If someone transfers your credit report or medical history, you have
no way of knowing," Tien said. "The natural feedback we expect in the
physical world just doesn't work in the area of information. You have
to be careful."
However, technology professor Dave Farber said that his work on the
task force convinced him the task force's model was a "critical" tool
in the fight against terrorists.
"A lot of (task force members) were very uncomfortable about data
sharing," Farber said. "But all of us at the end felt confident that if
the recommendations were followed, it was as good as it was going to
get relative to privacy protections."
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