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Gold9472
01-27-2005, 12:22 AM
[If there was any doubt that the evolutions of PROMIS software are the backbone of current surveillance technology, that doubt is now gone. Here BusinessWeek not only confirms that depth of electronic surveillance but names the firm Axciom as one of the key providers. Axciom was formerly known as Alltel and Systematics, under which name the company - and board member Henry Kissinger - are documented to have been deeply involved in the PROMIS saga during the 1980s and 1990s, together with other firms like Worthen Bank and the Lippo Group. For further information, please use the search engine at www.fromthewilderness.com and search for Systematics and Stephens. - MCR]

They're Watching You

By Paul Magnusson
January 24, 2005
BusinessWeek
A Review of: NO PLACE TO HIDE, by Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Free Press; 348pp; $26

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

We appear to be on the brink of a post-September 11 surveillance society. In one optimistic scenario, the U.S. is employing its full range of technical ingenuity to ferret out terrorists, using all the resources of the Digital Age and its quirky software geniuses. Meanwhile, dazzling new biometric identifiers -- iris scans, voiceprints, DNA registries, and facial recognition software -- are about to reduce identity theft to a quaint memory even while they shorten airport security lines and speed up credit approvals.

But in a less appealing second scenario, we could be on the verge of surrendering every detail about our private lives to an all-knowing Big Brother alliance of cops and mysterious private security corporations. They'll promise to protect us from terrorists. But along with that safety, we'll face arbitrary and unappealable decisions on who can fly in a commercial airliner, rent a truck, borrow money, or even stay out of jail.

That's the conundrum at the center of No Place to Hide, a finely balanced look at the see-saw struggle between security and privacy. Author Robert O'Harrow Jr., a Washington Post reporter, deftly shows how the government and its contractors have been lurching between these two goals ever since the September 11 terrorist attacks raised homeland security to the public's top priority.

The biggest threat and the biggest promise seem to lie not with official government databases but with the private companies that sell their information to all levels of government and to banks, airlines, credit-card companies, mortgage holders, car-rental agencies, and the like. You may not know much about ChoicePoint (CPS ), Acxiom (ACXM ), Equifax (EFX ), HNC Software, LexisNexus, or Seisint, but they have heard of you in more detail than you can imagine. Many of these companies, such as info giants Acxiom Corp. and Equifax, began by keeping track of such things as bankruptcies for credit-card vendors. But many of them are now able to provide lists of people who take Prozac for depression, believe in the Bible, gamble online, or buy sex toys. Another outfit maintains a 700,000-name list called "the Gay America Megafile." And ChoicePoint, has more than 250 terabytes of data on 220 million people. If printed out, those records could extend to the moon and back 77 times.

After September 11, it was only natural that these companies would volunteer their services in tracking terrorists. They had a head start in a critical technology: data mining. In practical terms, that involves cross-indexing every conceivable source of information -- unlisted telephone numbers, credit-card records, appliance warranty cards, insurance claims, arrest warrants, Social Security numbers, child custody orders, book purchases, E-ZPass records -- to compile a list of suspects or even possible terrorists that need to be placed on the Homeland Security Dept.'s "no fly" list. The government has funded many of the efforts, among them something called Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness (NORA), which can sift through billions of records and match people with their home addresses, phone numbers, jobs, friends, and other connections.

Few public objections have been mounted to this commercial sales activity. But when the Defense Dept. booted up a similar program in January, 2002, it conjured visions of George Orwell's 1984 and attracted the attention of privacy-conscious members of Congress. Named Total Information Awareness, the $200 million Pentagon project proposed constant scanning of all public and private databases -- including financial, telephone, and medical records -- for signs of suspicious activity. The system would even be linked to television cameras and low-power radar to keep tabs on individuals. It didn't help that the head of the program, Admiral John M. Poindexter, had been indicted in 1988 for lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair. Once the press got wind of the program, the Pentagon bowed out.

Scary, of course. But the private sector has managed to put this snooping to good use as well. ChoicePoint solved a series of rapes in Philadelphia and Fort Collins, Colo., by mining data to get six likely suspects. Using a DNA database it owns, ChoicePoint helped identify bone fragments at the World Trade Center ruins. Seisint Inc., using a data-mining program called Matrix, assisted the investigation into Washington's 2002 Beltway Sniper shootings. The company directed police to a house in Tacoma, Wash. There, in a tree in the backyard, they found bullets matching those that had been used to shoot 16 people in and around the nation's capital. The two snipers are now in prison. Also, soon after September 11, Seisint compiled a list of the 1,200 people it deemed the biggest threats to the U.S. Five of the original hijackers turned up on the list.

The successes of these private efforts help compensate for government's too frequent ineptitude. But there are checks and balances in government that simply don't exist in the private sector. Private companies are keeping an electronic diary of our lives, "only we have no control over the diaries and we can't even know what they say about us," concludes O'Harrow. "And there's no place to hide."

Simply_sexy
01-27-2005, 01:07 AM
*eyes glaze over*

Uh...Nice post!

danceyogamom
01-27-2005, 09:18 AM
[If there was any doubt that the evolutions of PROMIS software are the backbone of current surveillance technology, that doubt is now gone. Here BusinessWeek not only confirms that depth of electronic surveillance but names the firm Axciom as one of the key providers. Axciom was formerly known as Alltel and Systematics, under which name the company - and board member Henry Kissinger - are documented to have been deeply involved in the PROMIS saga during the 1980s and 1990s, together with other firms like Worthen Bank and the Lippo Group. For further information, please use the search engine at www.fromthewilderness.com (http://www.fromthewilderness.com/) and search for Systematics and Stephens. - MCR]

They're Watching You

By Paul Magnusson
January 24, 2005
BusinessWeek
A Review of: NO PLACE TO HIDE, by Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Free Press; 348pp; $26

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

We appear to be on the brink of a post-September 11 surveillance society. In one optimistic scenario, the U.S. is employing its full range of technical ingenuity to ferret out terrorists, using all the resources of the Digital Age and its quirky software geniuses. Meanwhile, dazzling new biometric identifiers -- iris scans, voiceprints, DNA registries, and facial recognition software -- are about to reduce identity theft to a quaint memory even while they shorten airport security lines and speed up credit approvals.

But in a less appealing second scenario, we could be on the verge of surrendering every detail about our private lives to an all-knowing Big Brother alliance of cops and mysterious private security corporations. They'll promise to protect us from terrorists. But along with that safety, we'll face arbitrary and unappealable decisions on who can fly in a commercial airliner, rent a truck, borrow money, or even stay out of jail.

That's the conundrum at the center of No Place to Hide, a finely balanced look at the see-saw struggle between security and privacy. Author Robert O'Harrow Jr., a Washington Post reporter, deftly shows how the government and its contractors have been lurching between these two goals ever since the September 11 terrorist attacks raised homeland security to the public's top priority.

The biggest threat and the biggest promise seem to lie not with official government databases but with the private companies that sell their information to all levels of government and to banks, airlines, credit-card companies, mortgage holders, car-rental agencies, and the like. You may not know much about ChoicePoint (CPS ), Acxiom (ACXM ), Equifax (EFX ), HNC Software, LexisNexus, or Seisint, but they have heard of you in more detail than you can imagine. Many of these companies, such as info giants Acxiom Corp. and Equifax, began by keeping track of such things as bankruptcies for credit-card vendors. But many of them are now able to provide lists of people who take Prozac for depression, believe in the Bible, gamble online, or buy sex toys. Another outfit maintains a 700,000-name list called "the Gay America Megafile." And ChoicePoint, has more than 250 terabytes of data on 220 million people. If printed out, those records could extend to the moon and back 77 times.

After September 11, it was only natural that these companies would volunteer their services in tracking terrorists. They had a head start in a critical technology: data mining. In practical terms, that involves cross-indexing every conceivable source of information -- unlisted telephone numbers, credit-card records, appliance warranty cards, insurance claims, arrest warrants, Social Security numbers, child custody orders, book purchases, E-ZPass records -- to compile a list of suspects or even possible terrorists that need to be placed on the Homeland Security Dept.'s "no fly" list. The government has funded many of the efforts, among them something called Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness (NORA), which can sift through billions of records and match people with their home addresses, phone numbers, jobs, friends, and other connections.

Few public objections have been mounted to this commercial sales activity. But when the Defense Dept. booted up a similar program in January, 2002, it conjured visions of George Orwell's 1984 and attracted the attention of privacy-conscious members of Congress. Named Total Information Awareness, the $200 million Pentagon project proposed constant scanning of all public and private databases -- including financial, telephone, and medical records -- for signs of suspicious activity. The system would even be linked to television cameras and low-power radar to keep tabs on individuals. It didn't help that the head of the program, Admiral John M. Poindexter, had been indicted in 1988 for lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair. Once the press got wind of the program, the Pentagon bowed out.

Scary, of course. But the private sector has managed to put this snooping to good use as well. ChoicePoint solved a series of rapes in Philadelphia and Fort Collins, Colo., by mining data to get six likely suspects. Using a DNA database it owns, ChoicePoint helped identify bone fragments at the World Trade Center ruins. Seisint Inc., using a data-mining program called Matrix, assisted the investigation into Washington's 2002 Beltway Sniper shootings. The company directed police to a house in Tacoma, Wash. There, in a tree in the backyard, they found bullets matching those that had been used to shoot 16 people in and around the nation's capital. The two snipers are now in prison. Also, soon after September 11, Seisint compiled a list of the 1,200 people it deemed the biggest threats to the U.S. Five of the original hijackers turned up on the list.

The successes of these private efforts help compensate for government's too frequent ineptitude. But there are checks and balances in government that simply don't exist in the private sector. Private companies are keeping an electronic diary of our lives, "only we have no control over the diaries and we can't even know what they say about us," concludes O'Harrow. "And there's no place to hide."

its scary to think of all the information available on a private citizen ... and really, who cares if I buy corn flakes or miniwheats? (other than cereal makers) ...

it is vaguely heartening to read that there is a good side to all of this - that the vast quantites of personal information has been used put a stop to terrible things ...

but you've got to wonder if there was another way to reap the benefits without losing all of our privacy

Gold9472
08-13-2005, 07:50 PM
bump

ehnyah
08-14-2005, 12:59 PM
CIA Behind Automated Chat Room Spying Scheme

http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=1307

35,000 Internal FBI Documents on Activist Raises "Free Speech" Concern - Your Patriot Act at work

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/18/politics/18protest.html?ex=1279339200&en=14724d069c3bf6a5&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

FBI Admits Keeping Files on Activists

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7056.shtml

Think This Isn't A Police State? Think Again

http://www.politicsofdissent.blogspot.com./

Bush's terrorizing war on information

http://www.rawstory.com/exclusives/avery/bush_war_on_information_terror_914.htm

Wiretapping the Web

A literal reading of electronic eavesdropping laws?coupled with a new FCC proposal?may make it easier for Washington to watch you online

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5697267/site/newsweek/

Is the FBI Spying on You?

The ACLU has launched a nationwide effort to expose and prevent FBI spying on people and groups simply for speaking out or practicing their faith. As a first step, the ACLU and its affiliates have filed Freedom of Information Act requests in more than a dozen states. Although the FBI has refused to turn over most of the files, we have obtained evidence (pdf) that confirms the FBI and local police, working through Joint Terrorism Task Forces, are spying on political, environmental, anti-war and faith-based groups. We think the public deserves to know who is being investigated and why. We have sued (pdf) the FBI and the Department of Justice to get those answers.

Our clients comprise advocates for causes including the environment, animal rights, labor, religion, Native American rights, fair trade, grassroots politics, peace, social justice, nuclear disarmament, human rights and civil liberties. When the FBI invades the privacy of political and religious groups in the name of fighting terrorism, it abuses our trust and freedom.

http://www.aclu.org/spyfiles/

AuGmENTor
09-16-2007, 10:11 PM
CIA Behind Automated Chat Room Spying Scheme

http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=1307

35,000 Internal FBI Documents on Activist Raises "Free Speech" Concern - Your Patriot Act at work

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/18/politics/18protest.html?ex=1279339200&en=14724d069c3bf6a5&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

FBI Admits Keeping Files on Activists

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7056.shtml

Think This Isn't A Police State? Think Again

http://www.politicsofdissent.blogspot.com./

Bush's terrorizing war on information

http://www.rawstory.com/exclusives/avery/bush_war_on_information_terror_914.htm

Wiretapping the Web

A literal reading of electronic eavesdropping laws?coupled with a new FCC proposal?may make it easier for Washington to watch you online

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5697267/site/newsweek/

Is the FBI Spying on You?

The ACLU has launched a nationwide effort to expose and prevent FBI spying on people and groups simply for speaking out or practicing their faith. As a first step, the ACLU and its affiliates have filed Freedom of Information Act requests in more than a dozen states. Although the FBI has refused to turn over most of the files, we have obtained evidence (pdf) that confirms the FBI and local police, working through Joint Terrorism Task Forces, are spying on political, environmental, anti-war and faith-based groups. We think the public deserves to know who is being investigated and why. We have sued (pdf) the FBI and the Department of Justice to get those answers.

Our clients comprise advocates for causes including the environment, animal rights, labor, religion, Native American rights, fair trade, grassroots politics, peace, social justice, nuclear disarmament, human rights and civil liberties. When the FBI invades the privacy of political and religious groups in the name of fighting terrorism, it abuses our trust and freedom.

http://www.aclu.org/spyfiles/Where did this guy ever go? We need more members like this around here! Fuckin awsome post man! You ever wonder if the guys who just vanish around here met with ill fate? I mean, this guy could be DEAD for all we know. And I keep thinking of Partridge.

dMole
10-02-2007, 05:27 AM
Supposed to be from Reuters, but couldn't find a link there:

See:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071001/sc_nm/security_satellite_dc

U.S. delays domestic satellite spying program

Mon Oct 1, 6:55 PM ET


The U.S. government has delayed the start of a program that would use spy-satellite images for domestic purposes including counterterrorism efforts, a congressman critical of the effort said on Monday.

The federal Homeland Security Department told U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson that the program would not be launched until it had addressed civil-liberties issues he raised in August. Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, heads the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee.

The department had planned to launch what was called the National Applications Office on Monday, the start of the new fiscal year, Thompson said. "The moratorium on NAO implementation is only a first step," he said in a statement.

He said lawmakers would work with the department to ensure that the office follows "rigorous privacy and civil liberties safeguards that are necessary to keep faith with both the Constitution and the American people."

Charles Allen, the Homeland Security Department's assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis, said in a letter to Thompson the department was working to answer his questions and the program would protect U.S. privacy and civil liberties.

The United States has used spy satellite images for purposes such as monitoring U.S. natural disasters. But the new office would also use the images for domestic security and law enforcement, and it would share the information with state and local authorities, the Homeland Security Department has said.

Congress has authorized funding for the new office. But Thompson and other leading members of the Homeland Security Committee called for a moratorium, saying the program lacked legal safeguards to protect privacy and civil liberties.

The department said the program is legal and subject to long-standing procedures aimed at protecting Americans' rights.

werther
10-02-2007, 06:46 AM
Where did this guy ever go? We need more members like this around here! Fuckin awsome post man! You ever wonder if the guys who just vanish around here met with ill fate? I mean, this guy could be DEAD for all we know. And I keep thinking of Partridge.

I hope their not dead, but I also hope they did not 'go' the same way as Cassiea.(the chick with the pug avatar.)

AuGmENTor
10-02-2007, 07:12 AM
I remember Cassiea. Just turned out to be something other than what she purported herself to be. This guy and Partridge I am concerned about. Some guys fizzle out after a few posts (or even a few THOUSAND SGB, WGST being examples) but the other two P & E, didn't seem to. It was like they stopped all at once. And Partridge was posting up a storm at the end.

dMole
10-02-2007, 08:01 PM
I hope their not dead, but I also hope they did not 'go' the same way as Cassiea.(the chick with the pug avatar.)

I don't know if this is directed specifically toward me & my new avatar (or it is just random post ordering). I can assure you, I am neither Cassiea, "chick", nor pug-friendly...

d

AuGmENTor
10-02-2007, 08:26 PM
I don't know if this is directed specifically toward me & my new avatar (or it is just random post ordering). I can assure you, I am neither Cassiea, "chick", nor pug-friendly...

dSheesh! Paranoid much? No D, it had nothing to do with you. Talking about people who have seemingly disappeared from the site.