From: Randall <rvh40@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: May 10, 2005 8:55:12 AM PDT
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Return of Total Information Awareness project?
<http://tinyurl.com/94t24>
DHS chief floats idea of collecting private citizens' information
By Siobhan Gorman, National Journal
Call it Total Information Awareness, homeland-style.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff this week floated an idea
to start a nonprofit group that would collect information on private
citizens, flag suspicious activity, and send names of suspicious
people
to his department.
The idea, which Chertoff tossed out at an April 27 meeting with
security-industry officials, is reminiscent of the Defense
Department's
now-dead Total Information Awareness program that sought to sift
though
heaps of foreign intelligence information to root out potential
terrorist activity.
According to one techie who attended the April 27 meeting, Chertoff
told
the group, "Maybe we can create a nonprofit and track people's
activities, and an algorithm could red-flag individuals. Then, the
nonprofit could give us the names."
Chertoff also suggested that private industry form a group to collect
proprietary information about cyber- and other infrastructure-security
breaches from companies; scrub it of identifying information;
aggregate
it; and pass it along to the department. The financial services
industry
already has such a group.
"The secretary was responding to a hypothetical question with a
hypothetical answer," said Homeland Security Department press
secretary
Brian Roehrkasse. "He did not offer specific programmatic content or
discuss any specific proposed approach. Rather, he was discussing, in
general terms, the importance of this issue of balancing security and
privacy."
Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of
America, organized the gathering of about 50 security-industry
executives from companies such as Microsoft, Oracle, and Verizon.
Reached by phone at the meeting, he characterized the event as "an
organizational meeting to discuss how the [information-technology]
industry can work more effectively with each other" and with the
Homeland Security Department.
Because the meeting was closed to the press, Miller would not discuss
Chertoff's comments.One meeting participant said that Chertoff told
the
group that having a nonprofit collect names rather than the government
"would alleviate some of the concerns people have." Not so for this
participant: "This is what made me sort of shift in my seat. It sounds
like investigating every person for no reason." He was particularly
concerned that an unknown formula created by this new group would
determine the red flags.
_______________________________________________
Cuckoosnest mailing list