The Public Eye THE PUBLIC EYE SPRING 2004 19 WATCHDOGGINGTHE
WATCHDOGS The  Center  for  Regulatory  Effectiveness
(CRE)  recently  set  up Watchdog Watch.
Watchdog Watch  “define[s]  a  regulatory
watchdog as an organization whose primary
activity is to either participate directly in a
wide  range  of  regulatory  proceedings  or,
through  their  website,  to  significantly
influence the participation of other persons
in such rulemakings.” The watchdogs it’s watching include a who’s who of progressive groups:  Consumer’s  Union,  CorpWatch,
Greenpeace  International,  Policy  Action
Network,  Public  Citizen,  Friends  of  the
Earth,  PRWatch,  and  the  U.S.  PIRGs
(Public Interest Research Groups). Source: https://thecre.com/watchdogs.html      But,  says  the  CRE—whose  advisory
board consists (among others), of former
Office  of  Management  and  Budget
appointees, such as James B. MacRae (OMB
official under Reagan, Bush, and Clinton),
Jim Tozzi  (an  industry  lobbyist  who  has
held various positions at the OMB in the
Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan adminis-
trations)—its  paramount  goals  are  “To
ensure that the public has access to data and
information used to develop federal regula-
tions, and To ensure that information which
federal agencies disseminate to the public
is of the highest quality.” Source: https://www.thecre.com HIGH SPY WITH MY
POWERFUL EYE “Despite an outcry over privacy implica- tions, the government is pressing ahead with
research  to  create  ultrapowerful  tools  to
mine millions of public and private records
for information about terrorists. Congress
eliminated a Pentagon office that had been developing this terrorist-tracking technology because of fears it might ensnare innocent
Americans. Still, some projects from retired
Adm.  John  Poindexter’s  [yes,  the  Contra
man] Total  Information  Awareness  effort were transferred to U.S. intelligence offices,
congressional, federal and research officials
told The Associated Press.”      “In addition, Congress left undisturbed
a separate but similar $64 million research
program run by a little-known office called
the Advanced Research and Development Activity, or ARDA, that has used some of the same researchers as Poindexter's program.”      “‘The whole congressional action looks
like a shell game,’ said Steve Aftergood of the
Federation  of  American  Scientists,  which
tracks work by U.S. intelligence agencies.
‘There may be enough of a difference for
them to claim TIA was terminated while for
all practical purposes the identical work is
continuing.’”      “Poindexter  aimed  to  predict  terrorist
attacks  by  identifying  telltale  patterns  of
activity  in  arrests,  passport  applications,
visas,  work  permits,  driver's  licenses,  car
rentals and airline ticket buys as well as credit
transactions  and  education,  medical  and
housing records.”      “The research created a political uproar
because such reviews of millions of transac-
tions could put innocent Americans under
suspicion.  One  of  Poindexter's  own
researchers, David D. Jensen at the Univer-
sity  of  Massachusetts,  acknowledged  that
‘high numbers of false positives can result.’”      “Disturbed by the privacy implications,
Congress last fall closed Poindexter’s office,
part of the Defense Advanced Research Pro-
jects Agency, and barred the agency from con-
tinuing most of his research. Poindexter quit
the  government  and  complained  that  his
work had been misunderstood.”      “In killing Poindexter's office, Congress
quietly agreed to continue paying to develop
highly specialized software to gather foreign
intelligence on terrorists.”      “In a classified section summarized pub-
licly, Congress added money for this soft-
ware  research  to  the  ‘National  Foreign
Intelligence Program,’ without identifying
openly  which  intelligence  agency  would
do the work.” “It said, for the time being, products of this research  could  only  be  used  overseas  or
against non-U.S. citizens in this country, not
against Americans on U.S. soil.”      “Congressional officials would not say
which Poindexter programs were killed and
which were transferred. People with direct
knowledge of the contracts told the AP that
the surviving programs included some of 18
data-mining projects known in Poindexter's
research as Evidence Extraction and Link Dis-
covery.”      “Poindexter's office described that research
as ‘technology not only for ‘connecting the
dots’ that enable the U.S. to predict and pre-
empt attacks but also for deciding which dots
to connect.’ It was among the most con-
tentious research programs.”      “Privacy  advocates  feared  that  if  such
powerful tools were developed without lim-
its from Congress, government agents could
use them on any database.”      “The  Poindexter  and  ARDA  projects
are vastly more powerful than other data-
mining  projects  such  as  the  Homeland
Security Department's CAPPS II program
to  classify  air  travelers  or  the  six-state,
Matrix anti-crime system financed by the
Justice Department.” See https://www.becomethemedia.com/news/2004/
TIA_alive_reborn.htm Eyes Right compiled by  PRA staff. HAIKU Subversives plotting? Rights rolled into a spyglass The shadows scare US. by Chip Berlet