Bet he'd love to get his hands on this.... http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=68&e=1&cid=68&u=/nyt/20030212/ts_nyt/conferees_in_congress_bar_using_a_pentagon_project_on_americans Conferees in Congress Bar Using a Pentagon Project on Americans Wed Feb 12, 3:05 PM ET Add Top Stories - The New York Times to My Yahoo! By ADAM CLYMER The New York Times WASHINGTON, Feb. 11 House and Senate negotiators have agreed that a Pentagon (news - web sites) project intended to detect terrorists by monitoring Internet e-mail and commercial databases for health, financial and travel information cannot be used against Americans. The conferees also agreed to restrict further research on the program without extensive consultation with Congress. House leaders agreed with Senate fears about the threat to personal privacy in the Pentagon program, known as Total Information Awareness. So they accepted a Senate provision in the omnibus spending bill passed last month, said Representative Jerry Lewis, the California Republican who heads the defense appropriations subcommittee. Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, the senior Democrat on the subcommittee, said of the program, "Jerry's against it, and I'm against it, so we kept the Senate amendment." Of the Pentagon, he said, "They've got some crazy people over there." The only obstacles to the provision becoming law would be the failure of the negotiators to reach an agreement on the overall spending bill in which it is included, or a successful veto by President Bush (news - web sites) of the bill. Lt. Cmdr. Donald Sewell, a Pentagon spokesman, defended the program, saying, "The Department of Defense (news - web sites) still feels that it's a tool that can be used to alert us to terrorist acts before they occur." He said, "It's not a program that snoops into American citizens' privacy." One important factor in the breadth of the opposition is the fact that the research project is headed by Adm. John M. Poindexter. Several members of Congress have said that the admiral was an unwelcome symbol because he had been convicted of lying to Congress about weapons sales to Iran and illegal aid to Nicaraguan rebels, an issue with constitutional ramifications, the Iran-contra affair. The fact that his conviction was later reversed on the ground that he had been given immunity for the testimony in which he lied did not mitigate Congressional opinion, they said. The negotiators' decision was praised by Democrats and Republicans and by outside groups on the right and the left. Senator Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who sponsored the Senate amendment, said, "It looks like Congress is getting the message from the American people loud and clear and that is: Stop the trifling of the civil liberties of law-abiding Americans." Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who co-sponsored the Wyden amendment, said: "Protecting Americans' civil liberties while at the same time winning the war against terrorism has got to be top priority for the United States. Congressional oversight of this program will be a must as we proceed in the war against terror. The acceptance of this amendment sends a signal that Congress won't sit on its hands as the TIA program moves forward." Lisa Dean, director of the Center for Technology at the Free Congress Foundation, said, "I am thrilled to see Congress taking responsibility in oversight, given the depth of the debate on this issue." Katie Corrigan, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites), said: "This is a positive first step toward protecting the privacy of Americans. Congress represents the people's interests and appropriately responded to broad public concern about a program that does not reflect the goals of making us both safe and free." The negotiators' decision meant almost complete failure for a last-minute Pentagon effort, begun Friday, to protect the program from the Wyden amendment by establishing advisory committees to oversee the program. The total information concept would enable a team of intelligence analysts to gather and view information from databases, pursue links between individuals and groups, respond to automatic alerts, and share information, all from their individual computers. It could link such different electronic sources as video feeds from airport surveillance cameras, credit card transactions, airline reservations and records of telephone calls. The data would be filtered through software that would constantly seek suspicious patterns. The Defense Department had already begun to discuss the use of the system with the F.B.I. and perhaps other agencies. Now, without a new law specifically authorizing its use and a new, specific appropriation to pay for it, the program could not be used against United States citizens. But it could be employed in support of lawful military operations outside the United States and lawful foreign intelligence operations conducted wholly against non-United States citizens. The negotiators did agree to extend from 60 to 90 days the time the Defense Department would have to provide a detailed report to Congress, including its costs, goals, impact on privacy and civil liberties and prospects for successes against terrorists. Unless that report was filed, all further research on the project would have to stop immediately. But President Bush could keep the research alive by certifying to Congress that a halt "would endanger the national security of the United States." Senator Wyden's curb on the program slid through the Senate with no overt opposition, and among the House-Senate negotiators it has found no vocal opposition, either, making it an almost incidental decision in a conference fighting over billions of dollars for thousands of programs. Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee (news - web sites), said today, "If there is one thing that should unite everybody, from the very conservative member to the very liberal member, it is a concern that our own government should not spy on law-abiding citizens." Publicly, most of the criticism of Total Information Awareness has come from Democrats. Except for Senator Grassley, Republicans have been silent in public, unwilling to attack a project of a Republican administration. But as Senator Wyden noted today, no one from either party has been ready to speak up in its favor.
I agree with Safire! _________________ Privacy Invasion Curtailed By WILLIAM SAFIRE WASHINGTON — Readers with keen memories will recall a blast in this space three months ago at the proposed "Total Information Awareness" project, which the Pentagon proudly described as "a virtual, centralized grand database." In the name of combating terrorism, it would scoop up your lifetime paper trail — bank records, medical files, credit card purchases, academic records, etc. — and marry them to every nosy neighbor's gossip to the F.B.I. about you. The combination of intrusive commercial "data mining" and new law enforcement tapping into the private lives of innocent Americans was described here as "a supersnoop's dream." My even-tempered objection stirred the ire of uncivil anti-libertarians. "Blather, nonsense, piffle, and flapdoodle," argued the judicious Stuart Taylor in National Journal about my "hyperventilating." The Washington Post also thought my reaction a tad "fast-breathing." William Kristol's Weekly Standard sneered at "the ravings of privacy fanatics like the New York Times columnist William Safire, who triggered the anti-T.I.A. stampede." With the nation rightly worried about a new terrorist strike, and with Washington supermarkets stripped of duct tape and bottled water by residents dutifully following Homeland Security warnings, the privacy-be-damned crowd casting its electronic dragnet seemed invincible. "Strangling this new technology with a procedural noose is no answer to the threat of terrorism," intoned the Heritage Foundation. Then the strangest thing happened. Those of us on the flapdoodle fringe — from Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum on the right to People for the American Way on the left — found wide and deep bipartisan agreement in the usually contentious Congress. An amendment to the budget bill by Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, co-sponsored by Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, put a bit in the mouth of the Pentagon's runaway horse. The Wyden amendment held up funding for the Total Information Awareness penetration of the American home until the administration (1) explained it in detail to Congress, including its impact on civil liberties, and (2) barred any deployment of the technology against U.S. citizens without prior Congressional approval. One hundred senators voted in favor. Why? One reason was that two respected old bulls, one on each side of the Senate aisle — Alaska's Ted Stevens and Hawaii's Daniel Inouye — distrusted the executive power grab, and would not be panicked by the pitch of those zealots who held that the war on terror required the subversion of constitutional oversight. Another reason was the blessed stupidity of Pentagon officials in entrusting this dangerous surveillance to one Adm. John Poindexter. He was convicted of five felony counts of lying to Congress about Iran-contra, but the jury's verdict was overturned because Congress had immunized him. This was hardly the person to ask elected officials to trust with unprecedented, unchecked power. Belatedly, the Pentagon tried to get House leaders to kill the bill in conference. But the House agreed with the Senate that enforceable limits must be set on snooping into the private lives of innocent Americans. Think about that: Even as the nation braces for more terrorist murders, a Republican-led Congress absolutely refuses to give carte blanche to a Republican war president to treat all citizens as suspects. These legislators are attuned to the views of their voters; this means that a courageous constituency exists to defend personal freedom. The next assault will come from Attorney General John Ashcroft, whose lawyers are drafting a law to enable the Justice Department to wiretap citizens for two weeks before bothering to ask a judge for a warrant. Among other abominations, Ashcroft's "Patriot II" would computerize genetic information without court order or our consent. As in the Pentagon's Poindexter project, Justice's aim is to avoid judicial or Congressional control. President Bush, preoccupied with planning a just war, should shoot down this unjust proposal before he is embarrassed again by a Congress capable — on a personal-freedom issue — of rising above partisanship. Am I breathing too fast again? We hyperventilating, raving privacy fanatics may deal in piffle and flapdoodle, but we are not alone.
<font size=5>ASHCROFT ORDERS STAFF TO CHAIN HIM TIGHTLY BEFORE NEXT FULL MOON</font> WASHINGTON, DC—In a move that has sparked widespread speculation, Attorney General John Ashcroft gave explicit orders to his staff Monday to tightly bind him in heavy iron chains before the next full moon on Sunday, Feb. 16. "The entire Justice Department is under my strict orders," Ashcroft told reporters during a brief press conference. "I must be restrained, I must be shackled, I must be kept safely away from the innocent." Ashcroft said he told top department officials that his chaining must last the entire night of the 16th "at all costs." "I told them, 'No matter how much I scream, now matter how frantically I beg, you must not let me loose,'" Ashcroft said. "'I will likely tell you to forget what I'm telling you now; that I didn't mean any of it. Do not listen to me, I implore you.'" Added Ashcroft: "I'm not like other attorneys general." Ashcroft then abruptly ended the press conference, saying he was due at a Cabinet meeting "before the setting of the sun." According to a Justice Department memo leaked to The Washington Post, Ashcroft is to be wound in five loops of strong chain and shackled to a stone wall, his wrists bound in sterling-silver cuffs branded with the sign of the crucifix. Washington archbishop Theodore McCarrick has been enlisted to stand watch over the Attorney General for the duration of the evening, armed with ample quantities of holy water and wolfsbane. The memo also ordered Solicitor General Theodore Olsen to supply D.C. police chief Charles Ramsey with a .45 revolver and six bullets of consecrated silver, with vague instructions to use them "should it become necessary." Beltway insiders are at a loss to explain the unusual orders. However, in a possibly related development, during a Jan. 26 press conference, reporters noticed a small crescent-moon shaped tattoo behind the attorney general's left ear—a mark they had not seen there before. "He was up at the podium, announcing a new measure that would give the federal government broader powers to detain immigrants and other non-naturalized U.S. residents, when I happened to notice this weird mark behind his ear," Boston Globe reporter Jason Moran said. "I tried to move up closer to see it better, but he growled and shot me this chilling look I can't even describe. I immediately backed off, but I know what I saw." On Jan. 18, during the last full moon, Ashcroft unexpectedly disappeared from an NRA fundraising dinner he was attending. The next morning, a nude man matching Ashcroft's description was reported running through the streets of downtown Washington. D.C. police are also investigating a series of animal mutilations that occurred that same evening at the Smithsonian National Zoo's Deer Park. No suspects have been identified in the case.
Count me in with 100 senators; I'm a flapdoodle too. GW may have support during wartime, but crap like this will not be forgotten next election. RM95, Wouldn't it be nice if it was only during full moons?
