Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Pentagon Creates Oversight Panels for Total Information Awareness Project

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 18:07:15 -0500

Pentagon Creates Oversight Panels for Total Information Awareness Project

The Pentagon announced on Friday the creation of two panels to oversee the
work of the controversial Total Information Awareness (TIA) project. The move
was made in response to criticism from civil libertarians and privacy advocates,
as well as the effort by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to stop funding for the project.
The TIA project plans to sift through massive amounts of transaction data, such
as credit card purchases and travel records, looking for clues to terrorist activity.
An internal Pentagon panel led by Edward "Pete" Aldridge, undersecretary of
defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, will supervise how the
information-gathering tools are used, and formulate rules for how the methods are
used inside and outside of the Defense Department. The outside panel, led by
Newton Minow, a Northwestern University law professor, will advise the secretary
of defense on legal and policy issues related to the project

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Pentagon Names Boards to Oversee Data-Search Plan
Fri Feb 7, 5:27 PM ET

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Defense Department, under pressure
from Congress and privacy advocates, on Friday announced the formation of
two panels to oversee a project aimed at scouring computer databases for
terrorist threats.

Critics, both liberal and conservative, have
expressed worry that the Total Information
Awareness project will trample privacy rights by
allowing for electronic surveillance of personal
data of all Americans.

The Pentagon (news - web sites) has argued
that the goal of the project is to detect patterns
in transactions data such as credit card bills
and travel records to nip terrorist plots in the
bud. They say the concept is "promising" but
still in the early stages.

Friday's move came two weeks after the Senate passed a measure to bar
funding for the program until the Pentagon fully explains it and assesses its
impact on civil liberties.

Edward "Pete" Aldridge, under secretary of defense for acquisition,
technology and logistics, said he will head an internal oversight board
created within Defense Department whose members will be senior Pentagon
officials.

He said a federal advisory committee established outside the Pentagon will
be headed by Newton Minow, a professor of communications law at
Northwestern University in Illinois.

During a Pentagon briefing, Aldridge said retired Adm. John Poindexter, a
former White House national security adviser, remained in charge of the
program.

But Aldridge did not answer directly when asked if Poindexter would head
the project into the future, saying, "I don't want to get into personalities, and
I really don't want to debate the merits of TIA." He later said he was not
suggesting any changes in leadership.

CONCERN ABOUT POINDEXTER

The project's critics have expressed concern that the project is headed by
Poindexter, who was convicted of deceiving Congress in the Reagan
administration's Iran-contra scandal. His conviction was set aside on the
grounds that his immunized congressional testimony improperly had been
used against him.

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President Bush (news - web sites)'s budget for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1
calls for TIA to get $20 million, Aldridge said. It gets $10 million in the
current year's budget.

A spending bill that contains the Senate amendment barring TIA funding is
in the hands of a committee of Senate and House of Representatives
negotiators.

Aldridge said he believed the creation of the two boards addresses some of
the concerns of congressional critics, and said the Pentagon had briefed
Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and sponsor of the amendment,
about the move.

"We think we can probably come to a compromise that is acceptable to
us," Aldridge said.

Another Pentagon official, Michael Wynne, said with the establishment of
the two boards, "we are instituting the kind of oversight that, in fact, they
wanted us to."

The internal Pentagon panel is slated to oversee and monitor the way
terrorist tracking tools are employed and set rules for how such methods are
used within the department and how they would be used outside the
department, officials said.

Its first meeting is set for later this month.

The seven-member outside advisory board is intended to advise the
secretary of defense on policy and legal issues prompted by the
development and possible application of advanced technology to help
identify terrorist threats, officials said. Other members include noted First
Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, former U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell
and former White House counsel Lloyd Cutler.

The boards will help ensure that the project develops its methods in a
manner consistent with "U.S. constitutional law, U.S. statutory law and
American values related to privacy," the Pentagon said in a statement.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030207/tc_nm/congress_privacy_dc_2

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