Space-Based Domestic Spying: Kicking Civil Liberties to the Curb

Last month, I reported that the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) space-based domestic spy program run by that agency's National Applications Office (NAO) had gone live October 1.

Federal Computer Week reports that Charles Allen, DHS' Undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis, told the 5th annual GEOINT Symposium on geospatial intelligence in Nashville late last month that, "DHS' imagery requirements are significantly greater, in number and scope, than they were at the department's creation, and will continue to grow at an accelerating rate as the department's mission-space evolves."

Indeed during Hurricane Ike, U.S. Customs and Border Protection for the first time flew the Predator B unmanned aerial vehicle in "support of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's relief efforts," the insider tech publication reported.

As readers are well aware, the Predator B carries out "targeted assassinations" of "terrorist suspects" across Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. The deployment of the robotic killing machines in the United States for "disaster management" is troubling to say the least and a harbinger of things to come.

Despite objections by Congress and civil liberties groups DHS, in close collaboration with the ultra-spooky National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the agency that develops and maintains America's fleet of military spy satellites, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) that analyzes military imagery and generates mapping tools, are proceeding with the first phase of the controversial domestic spying program.

NAO will coordinate how domestic law enforcement and "disaster relief" agencies such as FEMA will use satellite imagery intelligence (IMINT) generated by military spy satellites. As I wrote earlier this year, unlike commercial satellites, their military cousins are far more flexible, have greater resolution and therefore possess more power to monitor human activity.

Testifying before the House Homeland Security committee in September, Barry Steinhardt, Director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Project, called for a moratorium on the domestic use of military spy satellites until key questions were answered. Steinhardt said, "Congress needs to act before this potentially powerful surveillance tool is turned inward upon the American people. The domestic use of spy satellites represents a potential monster in the making, and we need to put some restraints in place before it grows into something that will trample Americans' privacy rights."

Needless to say, a feckless Congress has done virtually nothing to halt the program. As The Wall Street Journal reported in early October, Congress' "partial funding" of the office "in a little debated $634 billion spending measure," means that NAO is now providing federal, state and local officials "with extensive access to spy-satellite imagery."

Allen told the GEOINT Symposium that while "geospatial efforts are being coordinated across agencies," technical hurdles must be overcome in order to improve geospatial IT applications. Federal Computer Week avers,

For developing future satellite imagery capabilities, Allen recommended diversity, availability, survivability and flexibility for future systems in a satellite and modular payload system similar to what was advised by the Marino Report in July 2007 to the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office.

"It describes an architecture that allows for short time between launch as well as an option for variable modalities. This kind of diversity is what I believe will be necessary to assure adequate collection of a wide array of targets," Allen said. (Alice Lipowicz, "Geospatial Intelligence Use Grows at DHS, Official Says," Federal Computer Week, October 30, 2008)

What those "variable modalities" are were not spelled out by Federal Computer Week. However, the Marino Report was released by Chesapeake Analytics Corporation, an under-the-radar Arlington, Virginia-based private defense contractor that describes itself "as a 'boutique' consulting firm" for senior executives "in the geospatial technology sector." The report itself was written by Defense Group Inc. (DGI), a spooky Falls Church, Virginia defense contractor for NRO and NGA. According to their website, DGI "customers" include the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense and "numerous Intelligence Agencies."

As we have seen however, the use of satellite imagery during "national security events" such as last summer's political conventions in Denver and St. Paul may have aided FBI and local law enforcement in their preemptive raids on protest organizers and subsequent squelching of dissent. One wonders if this is what DGI refers to when they write that the company "performs work in the national interest, advancing public safety and national security through innovative research, analysis and applied technology"?

NAO's launch is all the more troubling since an independent review of the program by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the department has been less than forthcoming that NAO complies with privacy laws and doesn't violate the Posse Comitatus Act.

The 1878 law prohibits the military from playing a role in domestic law enforcement. Since the 1990s however, Posse Comitatus has been eroded significantly by both Democratic and Republican administrations, primarily in the areas of "drug interdiction," "border security" as well as "Continuity of Government" planning by U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM).

Despite objections by GAO auditors DHS securocrats held up the release of their 60-page report, citing its "sensitive nature." The September 15, 2008 report, entitled "National Applications Office. Certification of Compliance With Legal, Privacy, and Civil Liberties Standards Needs to Be More Fully Justified," is now in the public domain and was finally released November 6, two days after American national elections.

It makes for a very troubling read. In their November 6 cover letter to congressional committees, the GAO writes:

Citing a growing need to use classified satellite information for civil or domestic purposes, in 2005, an independent study group reviewed the future role of the CAC [Civil Applications Committee] and concluded that although the civil domestic users were well supported through the CAC, homeland security and law enforcement users lacked a coherent, organized, and focused process to access classified satellite information. (GAO, "National Applications Office Certification Review," GAO-09-105R, November 6, 2008)

However, the "independent study group" cited by GAO was neither independent nor predisposed towards limiting the deployment of military spy satellites for domestic "missions." Indeed that report, "Independent Study Group, Civil Applications Committee Blue Ribbon Study," (September 2005), was the product of a panel comprised solely of securocrats and defense and security contractors who stand to make a bundle on NAO. As investigative journalist Tim Shorrock revealed last year, the intelligence-sharing system to be managed by NAO,

...will rely heavily on private contractors including Boeing, BAE Systems, L-3 Communications and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). These companies already provide technology and personnel to U.S. agencies involved in foreign intelligence, and the NAO greatly expands their markets. Indeed, at an intelligence conference in San Antonio, Texas, last month, the titans of the industry were actively lobbying intelligence officials to buy products specifically designed for domestic surveillance. ("Domestic Spying, Inc." CorpWatch, November 27, 2007)

Indeed, the "independent study group" was appointed by Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence who himself was a senior vice president for ten years with the spooky Booz Allen Hamilton corporation. McConnell oversaw that firm's extensive contracts in military intelligence and information operations for the Pentagon, Shorrock reported in March 2008.

GAO investigators have determined that while DHS "has established procedures for legal review, it has not yet fully addressed all outstanding issues regarding how the planned operations of the NAO, as described in the department’s certification documents, are to comply with legal requirements. Specifically, DHS has not resolved legal and policy issues associated with NAO support for law enforcement." As investigators outlined:

DHS originally did not fulfill agency requirements to identify privacy risks and control mechanisms but recently has taken steps to do so. At the time of NAO certification, DHS did not fully explain how the office would comply with widely accepted privacy standards, such as the need for personally identifiable information to be accurate, secure, and used only for limited purposes. Specifically, the NAO's original privacy assessment did not identify or analyze the risks that NAO operations might not meet these standards, nor did it specify measures to mitigate such risks. In response to discussions with us regarding these shortcomings, the Privacy Office developed a revised assessment that represented a substantial improvement in identifying privacy risks and mitigating controls to address them, such as providing appropriate oversight and building a process to identify and correct inaccurate information. However, differences between the review procedures outlined in the revised privacy impact assessment and those in the standard operating procedures raise questions about whether the specifics of the NAO's privacy protection controls have been clearly established. (GAO, op. cit. p. 4)

While paltry recommendations towards mitigating potential civil liberties' and privacy abuses by NAO were submitted to the DHS Undersecretary of Intelligence and Analysis (Charles Allen), GAO found that "specific measures have not yet been developed to address the potential for improper use or retention of information provided by the NAO and the potential for impermissible requests to be accepted as a result of a reliance on broad annual memorandums as justifications." In other words at NAO, as at other intelligence agencies across the war on terror's domestic "battlespace," it's business as usual.

Three categories of classified satellite information are to be provided law enforcement by the National Applications Office:

* Geospatial intelligence (GEOINT)--GEOINT is defined as "the exploitation and analysis of imagery and geospatial information to describe, assess, and visually depict physical features and geographically referenced activities on the Earth. Geospatial intelligence consists of imagery, imagery intelligence, and geospatial information."

* Measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT)--MASINT is defined as intelligence "derived from measurements of physical phenomena intrinsic to an object or event." These phenomena can include the following types:" electro-optical, infrared, laser, spectral, radar, polarimetric, high-power or unintentional radio frequency emanations, geophysical, chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear."

* Electronic intelligence (ELINT)--ELINT is defined as "technical and geolocation intelligence derived from non-communications electromagnetic radiations emanating from other than nuclear detonations or radioactive sources. It does not include oral or written communications." Thus, ELINT could include intelligence based on signals from machines, such as computers, but not telephone conversations or other communications between individuals. (GAO, op. cit., p. 25)

While DHS has yet to resolve legal and policy issues associated with NAO support for law enforcement operations, the Office still continues to identify such support as a key element of its "mission." Indeed, DHS' Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Office did not resolve how NAO will comply with the applicability of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, Posse Comitatus and the Reagan-era Executive Order 12333 that limits how federal intelligence agencies collect information on U.S. citizens and legal residents.

Citing lax standards in NAO's legal review process, GAO found that "the process for developing and approving annual memorandums for MASINT and ELINT has not been delineated. Such procedures are an important control in assuring that access, retention, and sharing of information is properly constrained."

However, as the eight long years of the Bush administration have demonstrated, any and all measures to "constrain" out of control federal spy agencies and their privatized assets in the corporate world have been rebuffed. Indeed, congressional oversight of the "intelligence community" and the Executive Branch is a joke--at the expense of an informed citizenry and democratic institutions accountable to the American people.

While DHS claims that data gathered for law enforcement purposes will be "in compliance with privacy and civil liberties laws and policies of the United States," the GAO found that "by broadly sharing information with non-federal users, who are not bound by the Privacy Act, personal information could be at risk of being used in ways not specified when it was originally collected." Considering that some 70% of U.S. intelligence assets are employees of private security and defense contractors, NAO is a civil liberties disaster waiting to happen.

GAO revealed four key areas where privacy risks have been identified:

1. An individual may be unaware that personally identifiable information will be collected about him or her in response to a request processed by the NAO.

2. Personally identifiable information may be collected, analyzed, or disseminated in a manner that makes the information inaccurate.

3. Personally identifiable information may be misused by a requestor.

4. Associated technology may improve so dramatically that qualitatively new capabilities will enable the gathering of personally identifiable information in ways that are impossible today, thus creating new potential privacy risks. (GAO, op. cit., p. 44)

DHS claims these issues will be mitigated by "providing appropriate oversight" and by "building a process to identify and correct inaccurate information, and ensuring that the DHS Privacy Office and DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties remain critical components of all review processes as new and improved technology is developed."

In other words, we're to rely on DHS to police itself and that agencies critical to Office operations such as the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency will simply hand over America's most closely-guarded intelligence secrets to federal civil rights attorneys for appropriate "oversight." Talk about a blind leap into the darkness!

Let's be clear here and shed whatever illusions one may have about the outcome of last Tuesday's election. Despite the overwhelming rejection of the Bush administration and their surrogates by the American people, the incoming Obama administration will pay lip-service to civil liberties and the rule of law. This however, will amount to no more than a better public relations campaign, image management and product roll-out. America rebranded.

But as we have seen throughout the unfolding disaster that is the "war on terror," the Democrats have been fully complicit with the crimes of the Bush regime. From the USA Patriot Act, warrantless wiretapping, immunity for criminal telecoms, "preemptive policing," torture, financial fraud and the looting of the economy by capitalist grifters, not to mention the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, threats against Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela--indeed any nation that doesn't toe the imperialist line--the Democrats have been Bush's most faithful and reliable partners.

While the GAO's report is a welcome addition to the already voluminous catalogue of Bushist horrors, one can expect that NAO's law enforcement "mission" will quickly--and quietly--come on line. After all there's bundles of cash, courtesy of the American people, that need to be spread far and wide!

Annals of Crony Capitalism: Nuke Detection Machines Fail, Again

You've got to hand it to the Bush administration. No matter how pitifully their "homeland security" projects perform, money talks.

Back in June, I reported on one such pet project under development by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS): the Advanced Spectroscopic Portal (ASP).

In a $1.2 billion taxpayer-financed deal shared by Raytheon, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Canberra Industries (a subsidiary of the French nuclear manufacturing titan, the Areva Group), the defense contracting giants claimed that the ASP would provide port officials with a reliable means of detecting illicit nuclear or radiological materials smuggled inside containers entering U.S. ports. It was alleged by DHS' Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) that the ASP

...will enhance current detection capabilities by more clearly identifying the source of detected radiation through spectroscopic isotope identification. The ASP program provides significant improvement in the detection of special nuclear materials such as highly enriched uranium and weapons grade plutonium, differentiating between these and naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM). ASP variants include rail, mobile, and re-locatable systems. (Department of Homeland Security, DNDO, "DHS Public Release BY08/DNDO - Advanced Spectroscopy Portals (ASP) - Passive Detection Systems," February 12, 2007)

DNDO claims the system as currently designed is superior to what is already in place and that the ASP has demonstrated "low false alarm rates." (Which isn't saying much since current monitors have an abysmal track record and have failed to distinguish between the components of a radiological dirty bomb and natural radiation emitters such as kitty litter, ceramics and bananas!)

Back in 2005, Reuters reported that U.S. Customs and Border Protection commissioner Robert Bonner testified before the Senate that since the first devices were installed in 2000, "they had picked up over 10,000 radiation hits in vehicles or cargo shipments entering the country. All proved harmless." Security analyst Bruce Schneier wrote at the time, "It amazes me that 10,000 false alarms--instances where the security system failed--are being touted as proof that the system is working." Not much has changed since then.

Despite DNDO's extravagant claims, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a stinging new report stating that assertions made by the office cannot be backed up by statistical evidence.

The GAO's September 2008 report entitled, "Combatting Nuclear Smuggling: DHS's Phase 3 Test Report on Advanced Portal Monitors Does Not Fully Disclose the Limitations of the Test Results," demolished DNDO claims. In polite bureaucratese, GAO auditors declared that DHS massaged the test results and painted a rosy picture of what, for all practical purposes, is essentially a corporate boondoggle. Indeed, GAO auditors found,

Because the limitations of the Phase 3 test results are not appropriately stated in the Phase 3 test report, the report does not accurately depict the results from the tests and could potentially be misleading. In the Phase 3 tests, DNDO performed a limited number of test runs. Because of this, the test results provide little information about the actual performance capabilities of the ASPs. The report often presents each test result as a single value; but considering the limited number of test runs, the results would be more appropriately stated as a range of potential values. ... DNDO's reporting of the test results in this manner makes them appear more conclusive and precise than they really are. The purpose of the Phase 3 tests was to conduct a limited number of test runs in order to identify areas in which the ASP software needed improvement. While aspects of the Phase 3 report address this purpose, the preponderance of the report goes beyond the test's original purpose and makes comparisons of the performance of the ASPs with one another or with currently deployed portal monitors. (GAO, "Combatting Nuclear Smuggling: What GAO Found," September 2008, p. 5)

The auditor's aver, "if an ASP can identify a source material every time during a test, but the test is run only five times, the only thing that can be inferred with a high level of statistical confidence is that the probability of identification is no less than about 60 percent." Which means the ASPs failed at least 40% of the time to identify nuclear materials that could be used in a devastating attack.

Additionally, when the program was cited for "lapses" back in June, the Phase 3 tests were not to be used by DHS Secretary Chertoff to certify the program. Yet DNDO securocrats now state according to GAO investigators, that the less-than-stellar Phase 3 tests "will be relevant to the Secretary's certification that the ASPs represent a significant increase in operational effectiveness." However, DNDO "does not clarify in what ways the results will be relevant."

But as investigative journalist Daniel Hopsicker has written on more than one occasion, "When things don't make business sense, sometimes its because they do make sense... just in some other way." Perhaps, DHS is giving us another glimpse of that process at work.

The Washington Post reported that the DNDO "derided the findings as 'misleading and not substantiated'." And that GAO auditors "failed 'to acknowledge the depth and breadth' of the program's test campaign." GAO replied to DNDO's criticism and stated,

DHS comments that our draft report failed "to acknowledge the depth and breadth of the ASP test campaign, which is by far the most comprehensive test campaign ever conducted on radiation detection equipment." However, our report describes previous ASP testing and some of our prior findings about that testing, and notes that ASP testing continues in 2008. More importantly, the extent of testing is not the issue at hand. In our view, regardless of how many tests are performed, the tests must employ sound, unbiased methodologies and DNDO should draw and present conclusions from the test results in ways that accurately and fully reflect the data and disclose their limitations. (GAO, op. cit. p. 18)

During an earlier round of testing, the GAO had found that the DNDO's "estimates for detection rates were overstated and that the costs of the machines were significantly understated," according to the Post.

Originally slated to cost $500,000 per unit, the eventual price tag has ballooned upward and the latest estimates claim each machine will now cost taxpayers some $778,000. While chump change by current lax standards, it does raise significant questions as to the efficacy of congressional oversight of government handouts to defense and security contractors, many of whom are extremely generous when it comes to campaign contributions.

According to CampaignMoney.com, the Raytheon Political Action Committee (PAC) has disbursed some $1,709,060; Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. PAC, $161,017 and Areva subsidiary Cogema Framatone PAC $117,000 in campaign contributions during the 2008 election cycle to Democrats and Republicans, a veritable bipartisan "spread the wealth around" subsidy to grease squeaky congressional wheels!

Additionally, OpenSecrets.org reports that 2008 campaign contributions from the defense industry amounts to $20,670,429 with the Democrats narrowly edging out Republicans (51%-49%), reflecting where the "smart money" is going this year!

Considering the general climate of corruption that pervades Washington and corporate board rooms in America, do the dubious test results uncovered by GAO reveal a wider problem? Let's take a look.

With some 80,000 employees, many in possession of coveted Top Secret or above security clearances, Raytheon clocks in at No. 4 on Washington Technology's list of "2008 Top 100 Government Prime Contractors." And with $5,170,829,645 in government-related revenue, the multinational giant pulled in some $4,762,068,432 in defense spending dollars.

However, according to the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), Raytheon was No. 5 on that organization's Federal Contractor Misconduct Database (FCMD). According to POGO, Raytheon was cited for some $475.6 million in what the organization called its "Total Misconduct Dollar Amount."

From aircraft maintenance overcharges, contractor kickbacks, defective pricing, the improper export of defense items, False Claims Act violations, drinking water contamination in two Arizona cities, securities litigation, violations of SEC rules, through charges of racial discrimination and a lawsuit by EEOC, one can only conclude that being a well-connected multinational defense giant means "never having to say you're sorry"!

POGO had no information of wrongdoing on Raytheon's other two partners in the Advanced Spectroscopic Portal deal, Canberra Industries and Thermo Fisher Electric.

But wait, there's more!

GAO investigators testified before Congress in 2007, that DNDO's Phase 1 "tests did not constitute an objective and rigorous assessment of the ASPs' capabilities because, among other things, DNDO conducted preliminary test runs on source materials to be used in the tests, and then allowed the vendors to adjust their ASPs to specifically identify the source materials to be tested."

Sweet, isn't it? Like taking an exam and have all the answers before you sit down!

It now appears that the same faulty methodology was applied to Phase 3 testing, and as noted above, DNDO will argue that those tests, indeed all test results, including those in which the "vendors" adjusted their equipment to meet predetermined criteria will be used by DHS Secretary Chertoff to issue a favorable certification for the ASP program. (This is a technical "innovation" we have seen on the political front; to wit, as the Downing Street Memo revealed when "the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the [Iraq invasion] policy").

None of this of course, comes as a surprise. Despite capitalism's economic meltdown, large defense and security contractors will continue to flourish as Washington's "war on terror" inexorably advances on the home front. According to Washington Technology,

Raytheon reported a third-quarter net income of $427 million, or $1.01 a share, up from $299 million, or 68 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue reached $5.86 billion, up 12 percent. The Waltham, Mass., company also raised its financial guidance for 2008 and it expects stronger profits and sales next year. ("Defense Firms Thrive Despite Downturn," Washington Technology, October 24, 2008)

Indeed, Raytheon's Chief Executive and Chairman Bill Swanson told security and defense analysts "that he is optimistic that U.S. defense spending will hold up in the face of the current economic crisis," the technology insider publication reported.

Swanson said, "A lot of people want to predict doom and gloom. I don't see it from that standpoint." Nor would I, if I were in a similar position!

As the Associated Press reported, in 2007 Swanson received a $15 million compensation package from the defense giant that included $1.23 million in salary, $3.05 million in "non-equity incentive plan compensation," and $575,699 "in other compensation, including use of company aircraft and a company car, home security and financial planning services." How's that for hitting the corporatist "sweet spot"!

Despite the inescapable fact that the American people remain vulnerable to terrorist smuggling of nuclear materials into the heimat, and despite a veritable $1.2 billion flim-flam by giant multinationals aided and abetted by the corrupt and infinitely corruptible Department of Homeland Security, regardless of which party of capitalist grifters win tomorrow's general election, expect that "business as usual" will continue along on its merry way.

And you can take that to the bank!

Are You a 'Violent Extremist'? FBI's Analytical Lexicon Lowers the Bar

Do you "pal around with terrorists"? Are you a "radical" or express views that the government considers "extremist"?

On October 28, the whistleblowing website Cryptome published the FBI Directorate of Intelligence: Counterterrorism Division's Counterterrorism Analytical Lexicon. This eye-opening "Unclassified/For Official Use Only" (U/FOUO) document purports "to standardize terms used in the FBI analytical products dealing with counterterrorism."

But what it does instead, in keeping with the FBI's insatiable appetite for "actionable intelligence product," is create new categories of individuals who might fall under the purview of state "counterterrorism" investigations.

Right up front the Bureau informs us that the definitions used in the lexicon, "do not supercede those in the Department of Justice National Foreign Intelligence Program Manual (NFIPM), the Attorney General Guidelines, the National Implementation Plan for the War on Terror, or any US government statute."

That covers a lot and ground and can hide much in the way of government mischief, particularly when new guidelines issued by U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey permit broad, intrusive investigations by FBI snoops. As the Washington Post reported in early October,

The new road map allows investigators to recruit informants, employ physical surveillance and conduct interviews in which agents disguise their identities in an effort to assess national security threats. FBI agents could pursue each of those steps without any single fact indicating a person has ties to a terrorist organization. (Carrie Johnson, "Guidelines Expand FBI's Surveillance Powers," The Washington Post, Saturday, October 4, 2008; A03)

In response, the American Civil Liberties Union warned that,

The new guidelines reduce standards for beginning "assessments" (precursors to investigations), conducting surveillance and gathering evidence, meaning the threshold to beginning investigations across the board will be lowered. More troubling still, the guidelines allow a person's race or ethnic background to be used as a factor in opening an investigation, a move the ACLU believes may institute racial profiling as a matter of policy. ("ACLU Condemns New FBI Guidelines," Press Release, October 3, 2008)

In other words, an individual's political views, racial background or ethnic origin can serve as a pretext for an investigation. The Analytical Lexicon claims that "Analysis that labels an individual with any of these terms is not sufficient predication for any investigation or technique. Nor can any investigation be conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment or the lawful exercise of other rights secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States."

The next sentence, couched in overly broad language subject to a great deal of latitude on the part of investigators states: "Before applying a label to an individual or his or her activity, reasonable efforts should have been made to ensure the application of that label to be accurate, complete, timely, and relevant." (emphasis added)

Would, let's say, the word of a paid informant or provocateur, be considered a "reasonable effort" that would then lead to labelling an individual as a member of a "terrorist cell" or "network"?

Indeed, the Lexicon avers that "one or more terms from each of these categories can be used to characterize an individual and his or her background and activity. The applicability of these terms to an individual is generally a matter of degree and involves subjective judgments."

"Subjective judgments" by whom, and for what purpose, one might reasonably ask the Directorate of Intelligence. As has been amply documented in the case of antiwar activists targeted by the Maryland State Police (MSP), once individuals have been labeled "terrorists" their personal details disappear into a myriad of federal, state and local "extremist" databases.

During a 14 month period in 2005-2006 for example, the Maryland State Police and the MSP's Homeland Security and Intelligence Division (HSID), illegally spied on death penalty opponents and antiwar organizers.

Surveillance summaries, including names and personal details gathered on individuals and groups were entered into the Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) database, a federal data mining "tool" which tracks suspected terrorists and shares the results with national "counterterrorist" Fusion Centers.

The Washington Post reported that one "well-known antiwar activist from Baltimore, Max Obuszewski, was singled out in the intelligence logs released by the ACLU, which described a "primary crime" of 'terrorism-anti-government' and a 'secondary crime' of 'terrorism-anti-war protesters'."

According to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, labeled "Exhibit 2" in the report issued by Stephen E. Sachs, "show that there was communication between the MSP and the National Security Agency (NSA) regarding surveillance," the ACLU reported.

Spying and repression by "off the reservation" state and local agencies dependent on federal largess hasn't been limited to Maryland, nor are intelligence operations targeting peaceful protest and constitutionally-protected speech limited to the FBI or Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Such operations in fact, fit a discernible and troubling pattern that for decades has equated dissident political activity with "subversion."

As Mike Van Winkle, a spokesperson with the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center (CATIC) infamously told the Oakland Tribune back in 2003, "You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that (protest). You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act."

There you have it, the criminalization of dissent.

No reasonable person would oppose law enforcement officials investigating criminal gangs who might threaten Americans with horrific attacks such as those perpetrated on September 11, 2001 by the Afghan-Arab database of disposable Western intelligence assets known as al Qaeda.

But as numerous media reports, Congressional investigators and indeed, the 9/11 Commission itself have documented: despite multiple occasions before the plot was executed, law enforcement and intelligence officials failed to act.

Indeed, these serial failures--whether through commission or omission--can be characterized as criminal negligence, a prosecutable offense that could result in jail time. Yet not a single official was ever held to account. On the contrary the worst offenders, including senior administrators in the FBI, CIA and NSA were awarded plum promotions or assumed well-compensated corporate positions within the military-industrial-security complex!

My purpose here is not to debate various theories regarding 9/11 or its subsequent cover-up, but rather to demonstrate that in the wake of those horrific attacks, state intelligence agencies pointed their formidable surveillance apparatus at the American people themselves. This tendency is prominently featured in the FBI's Analytical Lexicon where we discover:

US-Radicalized: A "US-radicalized" individual's primary social influence has been the cultural values and beliefs of the United States and whose radicalization and indoctrination began or occurred primarily in the United States.

Ideologue or propagandist: An "ideologue" or "propagandist" establishes, promotes, or disseminates justifications for violent extremism, often through manipulation of primary text materials such as religious texts or historical accounts that establish grievances. He or she may not have strong links to any terrorist organization or be integrated into an organization's command structure. Unless he or she directly advocates specific acts of violence, much of such an individual's activity might be constitutionally protected. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, Counterterrorism Analytical Lexicon," Washington, D.C., no date, pp. 4-5)

As we have seen over the years since 9/11, the grounds for launching "counterterrorism" investigations have shifted from directly targeting intelligence and/or terrorist operatives on U.S. soil, to American dissidents and their supporters, the vast majority of whom are antiwar, environmental, civil liberties, socialist and labor activists.

Indeed, millions of Americans have questioned "the cultural values and beliefs of the United States," particularly when they have challenged the Bush regime's doctrine of aggressive, preemptive war or the systematic looting of the economy by capitalist grifters.

The Lexicon, while affirming that the theoretical or investigative work of alleged "ideologues" and "propagandists"--such as investigative journalists or historians--"might be constitutionally protected," the bar is set very low here and this too, fits the Bureau's own historical ideological mindset that dissent = terrorism.

And when citizens band together to form, let's say, an antiwar committee, environmental action group or labor organizing task force, the Lexicon designates this "a network."

Network: A "network" is any group of two or more individuals that is tied together by communication or common associations. A network is distinguished from a cell in that a network does not work together toward a discrete common objective, although all the members might ideologically support a common goal. Any individual's associations can typically be described in terms of multiple networks. (FBI, op. cit., p. 8)

Citizens would be naïve to think that the terms described in the Analytical Lexicon wouldn't be applied to them or that the Bureau's current investigative guidelines will not become the basis for new political witch hunts against Americans.

As we have seen throughout these eight long, dark years of the Bush administration, the geopolitical machinations of the U.S. ruling class have created nothing but disaster and suffering. From Afghanistan to Iraq and from Hurricane Katrina to the ongoing nightmare that is "Hurricane America" in the form of the recent $700 billion Wall Street bailout, ruling elites will do everything in their power to "keep the rabble in line."

In a political culture such as this, we have all become "suspects."

DARPA Engineering New "Home Invasion" Technologies

Just when you thought the Pentagon's Dr. Strangeloves couldn't design anything more devilish than they have already, new plans on the drawing board may help make the science of repression an ever-more lucrative market for capitalist grifters in the defense and security industries.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon geek-squad that designs insidious ways to kill people, has announced a new project, Harnessing Infrastructure for Building Reconnaissance (HIBR).

The Broad Agency Announcement (BAA09-08) published October 10, is seeking industry proposals for a suite of high-tech tools that will provide "warfighters" and "peacekeepers" with the uncanny ability to peer inside your apartment building, in what the agency claims would be an unprecedented opportunity to map rooms, stairwells and people in real-time--the better to "pacify" them.

When the project is completed, DARPA hopes it will have contrived a technology that can electronically bore into a 10-story building with a dual-level basement. According to DARPAcrats HIBR will develop,

...broad and diverse technologies necessary for external sensing deep inside buildings with the objective of providing a suite of sensing technologies for situational awareness both above- and below-ground suitable across a broad range of building environments. The component technologies must support all external ISR [intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance] concepts of operations ranging from pre-mission planning through detailed assessment of targeted structures, and live updates during mission execution. (DARPA, Strategic Technology Office, "Harnessing Infrastructure for Building Technology," BAA09-08, October 10, 2008)

Indeed, the Strategic Technology Office (STO) will fully "investigate individual technological approaches that leverage building infrastructure to opportunistically collect information for interior awareness. DARPA believes that opportunistic sensing may be exploited to infer urban interior building awareness using exterior observations."

Readers of Antifascist Calling are well acquainted with the Pentagon's unbridled lust for "situational awareness." A DoD buzzword linked to the Rumsfeldian Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA, also referred to as "network-centric warfare"), "situational awareness" is a theoretical warfighting construct that proposes ubiquitous military control over the "battlespace." This will be achieved by the deployment of "stealth" technologies, "precision" targeting via microscale sensor arrays and satellite geopositioning of military assets. RMA presupposes that America's technological "edge" will translate into "full-spectrum dominance" over adversaries on land, air, sea and in space, thus assuring U.S. imperialist domination well into the 21st century.

Despite the cruel reality that automatic garage door openers, throw-away cell phones and decades' old ordnance reduced the "up-armored" American military machine to twisted hulks of molten metal in Iraq and Afghanistan, the high-tech "revolution" will continue, indeed intensify!

Since the 1980s, forward-looking military theoreticians have cautioned that all the high-tech wizardry in the world will not defeat determined insurgent forces. This realization led to a rethinking of Army doctrine called Military Operations on Urban Terrain (MOUT) linked to "asymmetric" (guerrilla) warfare planning against well-entrenched partisans, particularly in cities.

They pointed to the examples of Algeria, Vietnam and El Salvador, particularly when guerrilla forces (FLN, NLF and FMLN) despite years of brutal counterguerrilla operations against their civilian infrastructures, launched bold urban offensives. While guerrilla forces in cities may have been defeated militarily, the political dynamics created by ubiquitous "facts on the ground" rebounded unfavorably on the U.S. and their allies.

Indeed, an American colonel reportedly said to Vietnam People's Army commander General Vo Nguyen Giap, the brilliant tactician who defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu (1954) and fought the Americans to a stalemate during the Tet Offensive (1968): "You know, you never beat us in a battle." Giap replied, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant."

As the battleground shifted from opposing NATO and Warsaw Pact armies facing off against one another to global South, and perhaps in the near future, heimat cities, urban space was envisaged as a labyrinthian warren hiding "nests" of insurgents and other "enemies," say the vast majority of citizens who don't want to be "liberated" by imperialism.

A perusal of Joint Publication 3-06, Doctrine for Joint Urban Operations (JUO 3-06), published in September 2002 under the auspices of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, provides an overview of Pentagon thinking as it relates to urban warfare planning. As the authors of JUO 3-06 aver,

Cities reduce the advantages of the technologically superior force. The physical terrain of cities tends to reduce line of sight (LOS) and the ability to observe fires, inhibits command, control, and communications capability, makes aviation operations more difficult, and decreases the effectiveness of naval surface fire support and indirect fire support. It also degrades logistics, and often reduces ground operations to the level of small unit combat. In addition, the constraints imposed by a need to minimize civilian casualties and preserve infrastructure further reduce technological advantage. (JUO 3-06, I-7, 8)

Despite the observations of Pentagon planners themselves, Rumsfeld's "transformational" hubris with its over-reliance on "network-centric" means of waging counterinsurgent warfare came at a very steep price, particularly as the cost of invading and occupying resource-rich global South cities led inevitably to high U.S. casualty rates as local insurgencies successfully fought back. As we have seen, the political fallout on the home front in the wake of the disastrous Iraq occupation, increased geometrically as America's high-tech military machine was countered by throw away items and low-tech ordnance applied in ingenious ways.

As Durham University geographer Stephen Graham observed,

The first key effort to redirect the RMA to the purported challenges of US forces attempting to dominate and control global south cities involve programmes designed to saturate such cities with myriads of networked surveillance systems. The dream of US military theorists is that this can be done to such an extent that any identified target can be automatically identified at any time and so exposed to high-technology tracking and killing powers of 'network-centric' weapons. Such visions imagine pervasive and interlinked arrays of 'loitering' and 'embedded' sensors as overcoming all the limits and interruptions that megacity environments place in the way of successfully implementing network centric warfare. (Stephen Graham, "From Space to Street Corners: Global South Cities and US Military Technophilia," unpublished paper, 2007, p. 18)

Hence, outfits such as DARPA single-mindedly pursue technological workarounds to the innumerable political conundrums posed by occupation and resistance. But far from leading to a diminution of resistance, increasing levels of repression and violence at the heart of systems such as HIBR will inevitably have a boomerang effect. Thus HIBR, if technologically feasible, will be incorporated with other projects actively pursued by STO such as VisiBuilding. As I wrote in July,

VisiBuilding will address "a pressing need in urban warfare: seeing inside buildings." This Orwellian project proposes to 1) determine building layouts; 2) find anomalous quantities of materials and 3) locate people within the building. VisiBuilding "will develop knowledge-deriving architectures for sensing people and objects in buildings" in order to "find which buildings should be searched, through detailed assessment of targeted structures for building layouts and behavioral analysis, live updates of building occupancy to support building raids, and finally post-mission analysis to find hidden objects or people." ("America's Cyborg Warriors," Antifascist Calling, July 23, 2008)

DARPAcrats hope that once overhead drones, prepositioned sensors and data derived by satellites have zeroed-in on "which buildings should be searched," HIBR will provide "peacekeepers" kitted out with additional suites of sensors, real-time architectural snapshots of every room, wall, stairwell and basement in the "target" building, as well as "the structural, electrical, plumbing, and ventilation systems."

Accordingly, DARPA theorizes that "such information may be acquired through access to the exterior of buildings which may include direct contact with an exterior umbilical, but does not require contact or deployments within the building," and that "multiple approaches may be required to provide complete building interior awareness."

In other words, "approaches to acquiring such information may require active as well as passive sensing." Meaning that "mission execution" may require previous intelligence gathering such as that supplied by infiltrators, provocateurs and other "mission friendly" assets bought-off by U.S. "liberators." But as Dr. Steve Wright, an Information Technology professor at Leeds Metropolitan University wrote,

Peace enforcement implies coercion--including the kind of operations currently being undertaken in Iraq--while pacification operations imply a much more violent approach of wiping out dissent at any cost. These latter operations ... may be regarded as completely illegitimate by the targeted population. In such a context, as a state loses legitimacy, it also loses authority and must deploy increasing levels of force in its enforcement activities, just to maintain the status quo.

During pacification operations, activities may go beyond the limits of the law and spawn a catalogue of human rights abuses including a crackdown on all forms of dissent, total surveillance and tracking of human rights defenders, 'disappearances', imprisonment without trial and a range of cruel, degrading and inhumane treatments of the civilian population, including torture and extra-judicial execution. (Dr. Steven Wright, "Violent Peacekeeping: The Rise and Rise of Repressive Techniques and Technologies," Praxis Centre, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK, 28 January 2005, pp. 1-2)

Needless to say, Wright has described the entire panoply of horrors unleashed by the United States across the planetary "battlespace" of imperialism's "war on terror." And as I have documented in numerous articles, the coercive and repressive technologies of surveillance and control deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq have most certainly migrated from the "network-centric" fantasies of Pentagon repressors and come home with a vengeance.

From warrantless wiretapping, data mining and satellite surveillance, to the "watch listing" of dissidents, others deemed "suspect" by the panoptic police state, to the "preemptive" targeting of activists and journalists during the recent Denver and St. Paul political conventions of the major capitalist parties, "keeping the lid on" is a major preoccupation of our political masters.

But as socialist historian Mike Davis sagely reminds us in Planet of Slums: "If the empire can deploy Orwellian technologies of repression, its outcasts have the gods of chaos on their side."

ACLU Demands Information on U.S. Military Domestic Operations

On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request demanding information from the government on U.S. Northern Command's (NORTHCOM) deployment of the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Combat Brigade Team (BCT) on U.S. soil for "civil unrest" and "crowd control" duties.

Last month, Army Times published a piece detailing how the 1st BCT spent "35 of the last 60 months in Iraq." The 1st BCT--also known as the "Raiders"--carried out house-to-house raids and engaged in close-quarters combat in the city of Ramadi to suppress Iraqi resistance to U.S. occupation, according to a report on the World Socialist Website.

Readers will recall my October 11 piece, "Militarizing the Homeland:" NORTHCOM's Joint Task Force-Civil Support," that described NORTHCOM's Vibrant Response exercise at Fort Stewart, Georgia.

In tandem with the elite 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, the 1st BCT participated in mock drills designed to "coordinate with local governments and interagency organizations such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Emergency Management Agency," U.S. Northern Command News reported.

The Pentagon revealed that 1st BCT is a key component of NORTHCOM's Joint Task Force-Civil Support (JTF-CS), designed to "execute both homeland defense and civil support missions." As I pointed out in a piece earlier this month, current Army doctrine is heavily-weighted towards contingency planning for "civil disturbances."

Indeed, Army Times reported that the 1st BCT would be kitted out with "the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded." The publication reported, "the package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets." But after spilling the proverbial beans, Army Times retracted that portion of their report.

NORTHCOM now claims that a "nonlethal" weapons package was intended only for use in Iraq and not in the heimat. In the opinion of this writer, this is nothing more than a feeble Pentagon move to spin a story that has garnered much unfavorable publicity since it first appeared.

Rules for domestic military operations, including as an armed force to suppress "civil disturbances," are clearly spelled out in Department of Defense Directive 3025.12 (DoD 3025.12), "Military Assistance for Civil Disturbances" (MACDIS). Army doctrine and rules of engagement for civil disturbance and "riot control" planning have long recommended equipping troops with "non-lethal weapons" (NLWs) for what the Pentagon euphemistically calls "operations other than war."

As researcher and activist Frank Morales reported in Police State America, the Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL), located at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, "reacting to a growing sense of urgency to field weaponry in step with the requirements of globalization, issued a primer on the subject, entitled, Civil Disturbances: Incorporating Non-Lethal Technology, Tactics, Techniques and Procedures," in 2000. Why is the Pentagon now so hesitant to come clean on plans for using NLWs in the "homeland"?

Since the late 1960s, the military has gradually expanded its brief to include domestic law enforcement, drug interdiction and border security, in clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. The 1878 law specifically bars the use of the military in domestic policing. However the trend towards militarizing the inherently civilian nature of locally controlled law enforcement has accelerated since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, most infamously with the October 2002 creation of NORTHCOM itself.

U.S. Northern Command's original mandate "to provide command and control of Department of Defense (DoD) homeland defense efforts and to coordinate defense support of civil authorities," has since expanded with the May 2007 National Security Presidential Directive 51, Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20 (NSPD 51/HSPD 20).

Indeed, as previously reported, NSPD 51/HSPD 20's top secret Continuity of Government annexes have been refused to members of Congress; a clear move by the White House to inhibit the legislative branch from performing its lawful oversight functions. What then, is the Bush administration hiding from Congress and the American people?

The ACLU stakes out the legal ground on the erosion of Posse Comitatus and states,

Civilian authorities, not the military, have historically controlled and directed the internal affairs of the United States. This rule traces its origins to the nation's founding and has been reaffirmed in landmark statutes including the Posse Comitatus Act, which helps preserve the foundational principles of our Constitution and democracy. ("ACLU Demands Information on Military Deployment within U.S. Borders," Press Release, October 21, 2008)

Jonathan Hafetz, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project inquires: "What is the unit's mission? What functions will it perform? And why was it necessary to deploy the unit rather than rely on civilian agencies and personnel and the National Guard? Given the magnitude of the issues at stake, it is imperative that the American people know the truth about this new and unprecedented intrusion of the military in domestic affairs."

Indeed, senior NORTHCOM commanders have repeatedly dodged these questions. During an emergency, they claim JTF-CS "supports" the "Primary Federal Agency [PFA] ... designated to coordinate the government's response to a disaster or emergency situation." But "support" to a civilian agency is not the same as playing a subordinate role to civilian leadership. This is stated unambiguously by NORTHCOM: "Although the JTF-CS supports the PFA throughout a CBRNE [chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high-yield explosive] consequence management operation, the unit operates within a clear Department of Defense chain of command."

In other words, the "chain of command" followed by JTF-CS begins and ends with the Executive Branch and the President in his role as leader of the "unitary executive branch" and Commander-in-Chief. As former FBI whistleblower and senior ACLU national policy counsel Mike German states, "This is a radical departure from separation of civilian law enforcement and military authority, and could, quite possibly, represent a violation of law."

To facilitate an open and public assessment of recent "homeland" military deployments, the ACLU demanded that the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Defense "immediately make public all legal opinions, executive orders, presidential directives, memos, policy guidance, and other documents that authorize the deployment of military troops for domestic purposes."

Such a demand arises precisely because of the unprecedented expansion of the U.S. national security-surveillance complex since the 9/11 attacks. As the civil liberties' group pointedly reminds us,

[T]he Department of Defense has dramatically expanded its role in domestic law enforcement and intelligence operations, including the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping programs, the Department of Homeland Security's use of military spy satellites, and the participation of military personnel in state and local intelligence fusion centers. The ACLU has repeatedly expressed concern about these incremental encroachments of the military into domestic affairs, and the assignment of active duty troops to Northern Command only heightens these concerns.

Unfortunately, some, if not most members of Congress, rather than defending the rights of the American people would rather re-write Posse Comitatus to reflect the needs of an "Executive Branch gone wild." As David Swanson reported on AfterDowningStreet.org, Senator John Warner wrote a constituent who had expressed alarm over the 1st BCT's attachment to NORTHCOM. Swanson commented,

This, like other changes imposed by President Bush, of course violates the Posse Comitatus Act. It also served to strengthen the threats of martial law that Congressman Brad Sherman reported the White House making to Congress members in order to win their support for the $780 billion give-away to Wall Street. (David Swanson, "Sen. Warner Supports Domestic Use of Military, AfterDowningStreet.org, October 21, 2008)

Claiming he is "deeply concerned that the Department of Defense and the President may not have authority to use active duty personnel in the most effective manner," Warner writes,

I believe we must review the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act and similar provisions that limit the role of the active duty military to ensure that every available asset is properly employed in any type of future emergency situation. Title 18, Section 1385 of the U.S. Code, commonly referred to as the Posse Comitatus Act, prevents the armed forces from becoming involved in law enforcement activities for which, in most cases, they are not specifically trained or equipped. Posse Comitatus is largely rooted in historical tradition that prohibits military involvement in civilian affairs.

To be clear, I do not believe that U.S. law pertaining to this matter needs to be entirely rewritten. I do, however, think it is necessary that we review the regulations governing use of military personnel in domestic operations in order to better understand how all of our military assets can best assist during emergency situations.

Attentive readers will recall that "The John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007," included a section that permitted the President to deploy the armed forces to "restore public order" or to "suppress any insurrection." As Democracy Now's Amy Goodman reported earlier this month, "while a later bill repealed this, President Bush attached a signing statement that he did not feel bound by the repeal."

The ACLU's concerns are fully warranted and demand an impartial evaluation of the dangerous implications for democracy, particularly in light of the current capitalist economic crisis. As the historic meltdown deepens, social tensions--and struggles--will inevitably intensify. As researcher and analyst Michel Chossudovsky wrote,

Civil unrest resulting from the financial meltdown is a distinct possibility, given the broad impacts of financial collapse on lifelong savings, pension funds, homeownership, etc.

The timing of this planned militarization is crucial: how will it affect the presidential elections scheduled for Tuesday November 4.

The brigade in its domestic homeland activities will be designated as the Consequence Management Response Force (CCMRF).

What "Consequences" are being envisaged? ("Pre-election Militarization of the North American Homeland. US Combat Troops in Iraq repatriated to 'help with civil unrest'," Global Research, September 26, 2008)

While the state justifies this deployment as a response to "terrorist threats," what other scenarios are being contemplated?

With daily reports of voter suppression drives by the Republican Party in multiple "battleground" states hitting the corporate media, and a major exposé of these antidemocratic operations by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast published in Rolling Stone, Washington's plans for the use of military force at home is a dagger aimed directly at the American people--and what remains of a democratic republic--by a thuggish and bankrupt ruling elite.

'Tying the room together': DARPA's Project Gandalf

In the 1998 Coen brothers cult film The Big Lebowski, southern California slacker Jeffrey Lebowski aka "The Dude," bemoans the desecration of his living room rug by criminals out to collect a debt in a hilariously absurd case of mistaken identity. After the thugs urinate on his prized possession, The Dude is crestfallen because that rug "really tied the room together."

Fast forward to 2008, only there's no mistaking either the identities or what's being "tied together" here. DARPA's Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) is seeking solicitations for "Project Gandalf," according to an October 7 "Industry Day" announcement on the Federal Business Opportunities website.

In a bid to "tie the room together," DARPA is developing a demonstration project that will provide "counterterrorist" special operators and spies, aka state terrorists, with

solutions to ... radio frequency (RF) geolocation and emitter identification using specific emitter identification (SEI) for specific signals of interest. The ultimate goal of the Gandalf program is to enable a set of handheld devices to be utilized to perform RF geolocation and SEI on RF signals of interest to the Gandalf program. The specific goals and performance objectives associated with RF geolocation and SEI for the Gandalf system are classified. ("Gandalf Program, DARPA Industry Day Announcement," Federal Business Opportunities, October 7, 2008)

That's right, a hand-held cell phone tracking device that will enable security operatives to locate and take out opponents of the capitalist "new order" in global South or "hardened" heimat cities.

Sounds like a seamless way to "tie together" information culled by NSA trolls or the Justice Department's Terrorist Identity Datamart Environment (TIDE), the "master list" from which all other federal agencies derive their own dubious watch lists.

The Gandalf Program is classified Secret/NOFORN, meaning only American firms whose personnel hold coveted U.S. Department of Defense "secret clearances or higher" need apply. The October 28, 2008 Industry Day will be held at the Rosslyn, Virginia headquarters of the Scitor Corporation. An appropriate venue if ever there were one.

Deriving its name from a Latin word meaning "to seek to know," Scitor's website has little in the way of useful information for the researcher, aside that is, from the usual banalities about "excellence" and "solving customer needs."

However, a profile on Yahoo! Finance reveals that Scitor "hopes to aid you in your search for technological knowledge and harmony." (!) There we also learn that the firm "offers a wide range of professional and technological services, including consulting work, risk management, software development and systems engineering." Unsurprisingly, "Scitor works primarily for U.S. government agencies, including the Department of Defense."

Founded in 1979, the company was acquired in 2007 by the private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners LLP. With $421.9 million in revenue in 2007, the company employs some 1,100 people with top secret and above security clearances. Their main competitors according to Yahoo's profile are Lockheed Martin Information Systems & Global Services, Northrop Grumman Information Technology and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).

But as investigative journalist Tim Shorrock revealed in his essential book Spies For Hire,

...Scitor, a CIA and defense contractor company...has become a $300 million company without creating a single ripple in the media. "It's the biggest company you never heard of," said a former NSA officer who knows the company well.

Scitor is a technology company that does extensive work for the U.S. Air Force in aerospace communications and satellite support services. The privately held company is also an important contractor for the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology... Within that directorate, two sources said, it is used primarily by the Office of Technical Services, the secretive unit that develops the gadgets, weapons and disguises used by spies. ...

A Scitor contract with the General Services Administration posted on the GSA's Web site lists the CIA among the company's clients. It states that Scitor helps government agencies manage "major acquisitions and cradle-to-grave programs that are vital to national defense." Those agencies include the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Security Agency, the NGA [National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency], the CIA and the Pentagon. (Tim Shorrock, Spies For Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008, pp. 141, 142)

Clearly, DARPA's cell phone tracking proposal falls well within the parameters of Scitor's spooky brief.

While the "specific goals and performance objectives associated with RF geolocation and SEI for the Gandalf system are classified," it doesn't take a rocket scientist--or securocrat--to realize there's real money to be made here.

Former Royal Navy officer Lew Page who unearthed the project for the U.K. online tech publication The Register, reports that "Project Gandalf" will supplement work "already done by surveillance aircrafts and/or drones." The "new wrinkle" according to Page, "is being able to do it using handheld devices" at close quarters. Page writes,

So it would appear that a group of undercover operatives or special-forces troops dispersed near a target (perhaps a specific cell or satellite phone) might carry portable gadgets, presumably networked. The netted devices would be able to pick out the phone, radio or whatever they were after and track it. ...

As far as the technology goes, the idea sounds feasible. Commercial pico/microcell gear, for instance--with all the capabilities needed to ID and locate cell phones--is already easily down to briefcase size. Satellite phones would be harder, of course. (Lew Page, "DARPA to Begin Mysterious 'Project Gandalf'," The Register, October 8, 2008)

As I wrote in "Niche Telecom Providers Assisting NSA Spy Operations," enterprising capitalist grifters in the telecom industry are already "providing security agencies with real-time cell phone tracking capabilities." What makes this research so insidious are the workarounds supplied--at a premium price--by under-the-radar companies to NSA or the U.K.'s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) not covered by any law.

Project Gandalf clearly travels along the same repressive continuum but with a twist. If the program pans out it will give security agents an "up close and personal" capacity, let's just call it for the sake of argument, that real-world intel touch required to disrupt meetings or smash an organizing drive even as they're taking place. Now that's real progress!

Industry Day Goals at the upcoming October 28 meet and greet are threefold:

1) to familiarize participants with DARPA's interest in RF geolocation and SEI technologies, 2) to identify potential offerors and promote understanding of the BAA proposal requirements, and 3) to promote discussion of synergistic capabilities among potential program participants. Information on the Gandalf solicitation will be available at: http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/solicit/solicit_open.asp following the publication of the BAA in FedBizOpps. Following the Industry Day, the web site will contain the unclassified Gandalf Frequently Asked Questions, unclassified presentations from the Industry Day, and information on how to obtain the classified briefings and Q&A.

As the European watchdog group Quintessenz has revealed, digital and telephonic privacy invasions represent a fundamental assault on "freedom of information, the right to personal privacy and data integrity, the right to communicate freely."

With information on Thales "Autonomous facility for IP Monitoring," aka IP Tr@pper, the Siemens Intelligence Platform, Force10 Networks "10 Gigabit Packet Filtering" presentation to the NSA "for high speed government surveillance," to the Verint (formerly Comverse Infosys) "STAR-GATE interception system," the Quintessenz project "ties the room together" on state and corporate assaults on our fundamental right to free speech and privacy.

As Antifascist Calling has previously reported (see: "America's Cyborg Warriors," July 23, 2008) such "technophilic" moves arise during a period when "restless natives"--on the contested, resource rich terrain of the global South and increasingly, within the Western "homeland" itself--are challenging the economic, political and social hegemony of "actually existing capitalism." As Durham University geographer Stephen Graham wrote,

Here, attention should fall in particular on the ways in which biopolitical stipulations of the worth--or lack of worth--of human subjects are, quite literally, cast into the software code that operates increasingly automated and multi-scale surveillance, targeting and killing systems. Thus, the new technoscience of the urbanized RMA [Revolution in Military Affairs] concentrates on distinguishing 'normal' urban space-times and ecologies in the global north, so that the apparatus of an increasingly militarized police state can be used to discipline those deemed 'abnormal'. (Stephen Graham, "Surveillance, urbanization, and the 'Revolution in Military Affairs'," in D. Lyon, Theorizing Surveillance, Uffculme, Devon: Willan Publishing, 2006, p. 264)

And as we have seen in recent surveillance scandals in the U.S. and elsewhere, those deemed "abnormal" include: union organizers, antiwar activists, socialist parties, antiglobalization campaigners, environmentalists, animal rights activists, civil liberties and human rights organizations, the list goes on and on. Indeed, from the point of view of state security agencies and their outsourced corporate partners, potentially "abnormal" or at least politically "suspect" individuals encompass the vast majority of citizens.

Finally, as the West's "terrorism industry" continues to grow at a rate directly proportional to capitalism's economic decline, we can expect that enterprising corporate grifters will flood DARPA with proposals to make "Project Gandalf" a reality.

ACLU Files New FOIA Requests for NSA Spying Documents. EFF Charges Telecom Amnesty Unconstitutional

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests demanding that the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) and the National Security Agency (NSA) disclose "any policies and procedures" that protect Americans' privacy rights when the ultra-spooky agency "collects, stores and disseminates private U.S. communications."

The FOIA brief opens a new front in an on-going campaign by the civil liberties' group to pry information from unaccountable Bush administration spy agencies and their "up-armored" lawyers in the Justice Department.

According to Melissa Goodman, a staff attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project, "the American public needs to know whether the NSA's procedures are sufficiently protective of our privacy rights. Unfortunately, there is often no meaningful court oversight of the NSA's surveillance activities and the NSA is left to police itself," Goodman said in a press release on Wednesday.

Coming on the heels of last week's report by ABC News that provided new details of the Agency's illegal spying on hundreds of aid workers, journalists and soldiers stationed in Iraq, the ACLU is charging that the NSA spied on personal phone calls that "were not in any way related to national security." Indeed, intimate phone calls intercepted by Army communications specialists were routinely shared and swapped like salacious trophies amongst NSA personnel for their amusement.

At a news conference last February, President Bush declared that "there is a constant check to make sure that our civil liberties of our citizens are treated with respect." A whistleblower, former Navy Arab linguist David Faulk however, put paid to Bush's lie when he told ABC that "he and his fellow intercept operators listened into hundreds of Americans picked up using phones in Baghdad's Green Zone from late 2003 to November 2007."

But the network's belated report on a story initially broken in July 2007 by David Swanson at AfterDowningStreet.org, former U.S. Army Reserve Arab linguist Adrienne Kinne, who was assigned to a special military signals intelligence unit run from the NSA facility at Fort Gordon, Georgia, revealed that illegal surveillance on Americans was widespread.

Prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks, NSA operators were forbidden to listen in or collect information on Americans. The NSA was specifically barred from doing so by United State Signals Intelligence Directive 18 (USSID 18).

Kinne also told Swanson that many of the individuals the NSA spied upon were journalists, including those staying at a Baghdad hotel that turned up on a U.S. target list.

Despite Kinne's repeated attempts to bring this information to the attention of Sen. Patrick Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, she was rebuffed by Leahy and his staff. "Now, in response to ABC News picking up the story," Swanson reported October 10, "Leahy is pretending to be interested in the matter."

These revelations come hot on the heels of Congress' July passage of the unconstitutional FISA Amendments Act (FAA) that granted NSA free reign to carry out warrantless spying. As Antifascist Calling has reported on many occasions, most recently September 20 (see: "Democracy or Police State? New Lawsuit Targets Bush, Cheney, NSA over Illegal Spying"), FAA grants unaccountable intelligence agencies the power to conduct driftnet surveillance on the telephone and internet communications of American citizens and legal residents. As I wrote in September,

These covert intelligence operations arose as the result of secret Department of Justice memorandums written by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). According to an unsigned and undated memo released by the OLC, the Justice Department claims that President Bush has an "inherent right" to carry out "communications intelligence targeted at the enemy." Indeed, as the extent of these illegal programs have revealed, the "enemy" is none other than the American people themselves!

Additionally, FAA handed corporate grifters in the telecommunications industry such as AT&T, Sprint and Verizon retroactive immunity for aiding and abetting the Bush regime's unconstitutional spy operations. The "best money Congress can buy," with the Democrats in cahoots with their Republican colleagues in the Justice Department are attempting to derail the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) landmark lawsuit, Hepting v. AT&T.

But in a move late Thursday, EFF attorneys challenged the law's constitutionality in a brief filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Judge Vaughn Walker is the presiding judge hearing Hepting v. AT&T. In a statement issued Friday by the civil liberties group,

...the flawed FISA Amendments Act (FAA) violates the federal government's separation of powers as established in the Constitution and robs innocent telecom customers of their rights without due process of law. Signed into law earlier this year, the FAA allows for the dismissal of the lawsuits over the telecoms' participation in the warrantless surveillance program if the government secretly certifies to the court that either the surveillance did not occur, was legal, or was authorized by the president. Attorney General Michael Mukasey filed that classified certification with the court last month. ("EFF Challenges Constitutionality of Telecom Immunity in Federal Court," Electronic Frontier Foundation, Press Release, October 17, 2008)

EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston charged that "the immunity law puts the fox in charge of the hen house, letting the Attorney General decide whether or not telecoms like AT&T can be sued for participating in the government's illegal warrantless surveillance."

Bankston pointed out that in a constitutional system "it is the judiciary's role as a co-equal branch of government to determine the scope of the surveillance and rule on whether it is legal, not the executive's. The Attorney General should not be allowed to unconstitutionally play judge and jury in these cases, which affect the privacy of millions of Americans."

Mendaciously, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey--a darling of "liberal" Democrats during his confirmation hearing last year-- claimed in a public version of the government's certification to the court for dismissal, that the state had no "content-dragnet" program that searched for key words in the body of communications.

As AfterDowningStreet, ABC News and AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein have revealed, this is clearly a lie as communications were vacuumed into government databases while state officials offered one prevarication after another to conceal the breadth of these illegal programs from the public.

EFF has presented the court with a summary of thousands of pages of documentary evidence that clearly demonstrate the broad, driftnet surveillance of millions of innocent Americans since 9/11.

EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl said, "We have overwhelming record evidence that the domestic spying program is operating far outside the bounds of the law. Intelligence agencies, telecoms, and the Administration want to sweep this case under the rug, but the Constitution won't permit it."

But that doesn't mean they won't continue trying. Immunity provisions in the FAA authorized Mukasey to inform Judge Walker in classified and non-public documents why the government is within its rights to seek immunity for spying telecoms. With little latitude, Walker has no recourse to deny Mukasey's request to dismiss.

However, as Wired Magazine analyst Ryan Singel writes, Walker, "a libertarian-leaning Republican appointee, has so far not been sympathetic to the government, ruling early on that the suits could continue despite the government's claim that the suits would put the nation at risk."

The EFF's constitutional challenge is set to be heard December 2.

The ACLU has also filed a lawsuit to stop the state from conducting surveillance under the new spy law, charging that FAA violates the Fourth Amendment by giving the government (and its alphabet-soup mix of intelligence agencies) "virtually unchecked power" to intercept e-mails and telephone calls. (See: "ACLU Sues Over Unconstitutional Dragnet Wiretapping Law," Press Release, July 10, 2008) The ACLU's current FOIA inquiries demand that the NSA and Justice Department produce:

Any and all legal memoranda, procedures, policies, directives, practices, guidance or guidelines created between 1993 and the present pertaining to the acquisition, processing, analysis, retention, storage or dissemination of Americans' communications--whether targeted for interception or incidentally intercepted--during the course of NSA surveillance activities conducted inside or outside the United States; and

Any and all records created between September 2001 and the present concerning complaints about, investigations of, or disciplinary actions related to the NSA's monitoring of U.S. communications.

Illegal interception of telephone and internet communications are intimately connected to data mining, a practice that seeks to establish relationships amongst "targets" by literally "mining" commercial and government databases for telephone communications, internet searches, medical records, travel itineraries, credit card purchases, etc.

As used by intelligence agencies, data miners claim they can identify trends that go beyond simple analytical results produced by the data. Relying on sophisticated algorithms, state data miners claim they can forecast "future events" through predictive analysis and its deranged off-shoot, link analysis, a subset of network analysis that explores the associations and relationships between objects and people. However, these spooky Nostradamuses more often than not generate false-positives that have real world consequences for their victims.

Just ask anyone unfortunate enough to have landed on the state's Kafkaesque "no fly list" or the FBI's sinister Terrorist Screening Center, a "terrorist watch list" that surpassed some one million names this summer, according to the ACLU.

Earlier this month, the National Academy of Science's National Research Council issued a scathing report questioning the validity of automated data mining, citing the slipshod manner in which data sets are linked together as well as the severe privacy breeches such programs inevitably produce.

Poor-quality data are a major concern in protecting privacy because inaccuracies may cause data-mining algorithms to identify innocent people as threats, the report says. Linking data sources together tends to compound the problem; current literature suggests that a "mosaic" of data assembled from multiple databases is likely to be error-prone. Analysts and officials should be aware of this tendency toward errors and the consequent likelihood of false positives. ("All Counterterrorism Programs That Collect and Mine Data Should Be Evaluated for Effectiveness, Privacy Impacts," National Academy of Science, Press Release, October 7, 2008)

But given the current trajectory of the "unitary executive branch," especially now as the financial system continues melting down and imperial wars relentlessly grind on, the corporatist criminals who rule the roost will undoubtedly expand the "public-private partnership" that has proven so profitable for the telecommunications industry.

With upcoming presidential elections in the United States, neither Sen. Barack Obama nor Sen. John McCain, the respective candidates of the capitalist parties of war and repression, have opposed FAA, NSA spying or the shredding of the U.S. Constitution. Nor is it likely either candidate will repudiate the unprecedented Executive Branch power-grab by the Bush gang once the winner attains "high office" come January.