More dragnet intelligence gathering, this time on non-U.S. NGO's

i've had the good fortune to become familiar with a number of ngo's (non-governmental organizations, or what we in the u.s. commonly call non-profits) that operate in other countries... just like in the u.s., they are set up for a myriad of purposes, but, usually, also like in the u.s., to accomplish something for the greater good of the community/city/province/region/nation that wouldn't or couldn't be done by either government or the private sector... yes, i am sure there are those organizations that are there for nefarious purposes, but i don't think that dictator bush's plan to find out which are which is the way to go...

The Bush administration plans to screen thousands of people who work with charities and nonprofit organizations that receive U.S. Agency for International Development funds to ensure they are not connected with individuals or groups associated with terrorism, according to a recent Federal Register notice.

The plan would require the organizations to give the government detailed information about key personnel, including phone numbers, birth dates and e-mail addresses. But the government plans to shroud its use of that information in secrecy and does not intend to tell groups deemed unacceptable why they are rejected.

The plan has aroused concern and debate among some of the larger U.S. charitable organizations and recipients of AID funding. Officials of InterAction, representing 165 foreign aid groups, said last week that the plan would impose undue burdens and has no statutory basis. The organization requested that it be withdrawn.

"We don't know who will do the vetting, what the standards are and whether we could answer any allegation," said an executive for a major nongovernmental organization that would be subject to the new requirements and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to harm his organization's relations with the government.

i'll tell ya what this sounds like to me... it's smack-dab in the same category as data-mining and warrantless domestic wiretapping - vacuuming up as much personal data as possible on as many people as possible, and then seeing what you've got and how you can use it against them, the same kind of bullshit that's happening inside the u.s., with airline passenger data in europe, etc., etc., ad nauseam...

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total surveillance

When "critical" black projects are killed, they have this nasty habit of not going away, but rather first being renamed. (According to Wikipedia, the Total Information Awareness (TIA) Program was renamed to the Terrorism Information Awareness Program in May, 2003.) If renaming doesn't work, programs seem to get shuffled around and relocated elsewhere. If that doesn't work, they appear to be broken into smaller pieces.

In the case of the TIA in relation to the Infosphere, that is really not a big problem as the information is literally part of the "Global Information Grid". So tools that find and stitch together the disparate information can be physically half-a-world apart. Much of intelligence work is already farmed out to private corporations anyway.

In fact, Wikipedia names SAIC executive Brian Hicks together with former United States National Security Advisor John Poindexter, as approaching the DoD with the Total Information Awareness idea.

[W]e will direct every resource at our command—every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every tool of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every weapon of war—to the disruption of and to the defeat of the global terror network." -- President Bush Address to a Joint Session of Congress Sept. 20, 2001

As stated stated by Glenn Greenwald...

UPDATE: Here is a snapshot of the United States from 2000-present. The Bush administration whispers something to "journalists." They repeat it uncritically on their front page. Other "journalists" read it. They believe it uncritically and then repeat it. With nothing else required, it becomes "fact"...

OK, let's start with 2000 then, with: "Protecting the Homeland -- Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on DEFENSIVE INFORMATION OPERATIONS", 2000 Summer Study, Volume II.

And then onto: GIG - Information Assurance Architecture.

"GIG" is "Global Information Grid" (the Infosphere)
"IA" is "Information Awareness" --> "Information Assurance"
"Information Awareness Office" --> "Information Assurance Directorate"

It seems that the aerospace industry has a keen interest in surveillance. Boeing bagged a virtual border fence contract and Lockheed Martin has undertaken the the FBI's new Sentinel main contract, after the Virtual Case File and Trilogy fizzled.

Here and here and here are several additional links that go to showing the extent of the programs early on.

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Data-mining exonerates Gonzo...? That's simply 20-carat hooey...!

what's wrong with THIS nyt picture...?

A 2004 dispute over the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance program that led top Justice Department officials to threaten resignation involved computer searches through massive electronic databases, according to current and former officials briefed on the program.

It is not known precisely why searching the databases, or data mining, raised such a furious legal debate. But such databases contain records of the phone calls and e-mail messages of millions of Americans, and their examination by the government would raise privacy issues.

The N.S.A.’s data mining has previously been reported. But the disclosure that concerns about it figured in the March 2004 debate helps to clarify the clash this week between Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and senators who accused him of misleading Congress and called for a perjury investigation.

it would be the SAME thing that's wrong with this wapo picture...

The report of a data mining component to the dispute suggests that Gonzales's testimony could be correct. A group of Senate Democrats, including two who have been privy to classified briefings about the NSA program, called last week for a special prosecutor to consider perjury charges against Gonzales.

first, let's hear from glenn greenwald...

This leak would be arguably exculpatory for Gonzales only if it reported that data mining was the only source of the Comey/Ashcroft objections, not merely one of the sources. But both articles explictly states [sic] that there were other grounds for those objections besides data mining, leaving open -- rather than resolving -- the only relevant questions: did those objections, contrary to Gonzales' sworn testimony, relate to the "TSP's" [Terrorist Surveillance Program] warrantless eavesdropping?

let's cut to the chase... data mining is PRECISELY what produces grist for the entire surveillance program... data mining - what i refer to as sniffing - is an automated program designed to "sniff" through multi-terabytes of real-time electronic transactions and untold mountains of stored data looking for certain pre-programmed patterns - words, phrases, data-strings, and hex code - which, if found, are then spit out for further analysis... if further analysis, probably also automated, confirms the initial analysis, the information is further spit out to a human analyst who makes a determination about what to do with it... the determination may include such options as further investigation, real-time data interception (wiretaps, et al), additional database searches, personal surveillance, etc... this is happening 24/7/365 and has been going on for years... the bush administration is simply banking on the fact that most members of congress, most journalists and most americans are simply too stupid to figure out what's REALLY going on...

p.s. and, in case you would like to see how it's all done, click here...

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