TOTAL INFORMATION ANALYSIS

Sunday, September 28, 2003

[Acxiom still features Clark prominently on its website.]

From Washington Post 2003 09 27:

Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark helped an Arkansas information company win a contract to assist development of an airline passenger screening system, one of the largest surveillance programs ever devised by the government.

Starting just after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Clark sought out dozens of government and industry officials on behalf of Acxiom Corp., a data powerhouse that maintains names, addresses and a wide array of personal details about nearly every adult in the United States and their households, according to interviews and documents.

Clark, a Democrat who declared himself a presidential candidate 10 days ago, joined Acxiom's board of directors in December 2001. He earned $300,000 from Acxiom last year and was set to receive $150,000, plus potential commissions, this year, according to financial disclosure records. He owns several thousand shares of Acxiom stock worth more than $67,000. . .

he helped the company win a government contract worth an undisclosed amount to provide data and consulting services to the CAPPS II program. CAPPS II is the second-generation computer-assisted passenger screening system, a network that Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta once described as "the foundation" on which all other, far more public aviation security measures depend. . . .

Acxiom is a data integrator that manages billions of records for some of the nation's top banks, retailers and marketers. The company said it has "the largest collection of U.S. consumer and telephone data available in one source" -- data that is used in part to enhance others' records and authenticate identities.

After joining the company's board in December 2001, Clark quickly arranged for executives to talk with officials at FinCEN, a Treasury Department agency responsible for financial intelligence and initiatives to combat money-laundering.

Clark also has met on the company's behalf with officials at the Department of Justice, the CIA, the Department of Transportation, the Transportation Security Administration and Lockheed Martin Corp., the defense contractor that is heading up CAPPS II. . . .

In a meeting at the Department of Transportation in January 2002, according to participants, Clark described a system that would combine personal data from Acxiom with information about the reservations and seating records of every U.S. airline passenger.



SEP 18: Wesley Clark and the CAPPS II control grid

This past week has seen controversy erupt over the revelation that low-cost air carrier JetBlue turned over at the request of the Department of Defense 5 million passenger records to a contractor called Torch Systems. Torch crossreferenced that information with data from a company called Acxiom, as revealed in a memo [PDF] posted online at the site of a travel conference. The memo also indicated the JetBlue data was the dataset used for CAPPS II tests. CAPPS II is the system being designed by the Transportation Security Agency to color-code every air passenger as either "red," "yellow," or "green" through a series of elaborate background checks.

Acxiom and JetBlue are both named in a complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday. And customers in Utah have filed a class-action suit against JetBlue.

Fort Smith Times Record reported upon Presidential candidacy announcement of Gen. Wesley Clark that "Clark also serves on the boards of several companies, including Acxiom Corp., a data software company with headquarters in Little Rock."

See also False paradigm update: 'Antiwar' candidate Clark is borderline insane warmonger.

| Posted at 05:20 | PERMA-LINK |

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