TOTAL INFORMATION ANALYSIS

Sunday, October 10, 2004

The 9/11 Commission bill described did indeed, of course, pass the Senate Wednesday night. This website's namesake may rise again quite soon.

Wired News Oct 6, 2004:

The Senate could pass a bill as early as Wednesday evening that would let government counter-terrorist investigators instantly query a massive system of interconnected commercial and government databases that hold billions of records on Americans.

The proposed network is based on the Markle Foundation Task Force's December 2003 report, which envisioned a system that would allow FBI and CIA agents, as well as police officers and some companies, to quickly search intelligence, criminal and commercial databases. The proposal is so radical, the bill allocates $50 million just to fund the system's specifications and privacy policies.

The Senate will likely have its final vote on the bill, sponsored by Joseph Lieberman (D-Connecticut) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), Wednesday night. The draft of the bill was based on recommendations of the so-called 9/11 Commission, which investigated the United States' lapse in intelligence and security procedures prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

[...]

[T]ask force member James X. Dempsey, director of the Center for Democracy & Technology, says the commercial records involved are more limited public records, such as home ownership data, not information about what mosque someone belongs to.

He said he believes it's "absurd" to prohibit the FBI from using a commercial database like ChoicePoint to find a suspected terrorist's home address (though the FBI currently can and does do this). On the other hand, he asked, "Should they be able to go to ChoicePoint and ask for all the subscribers to Gun Owners Monthly? No, I don't think so."

[...]

On Monday, more than 40 organizations, ranging from the American Association of Law Libraries to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, signed on to an open letter to Congress asking members to include adequate civil liberties safeguards in the pending legislation.

| Posted at 13:44 | PERMA-LINK |

Comments:

Post a Comment