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Why Orwell matters
By
Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - A Pentagon plan to build a
giant computer system capable of mining thousands of
databases containing the most private information about
United States and foreign citizens are coming under fire
from civil liberties groups and lawmakers in both major
parties.
The Orwellian-sounding 'Total
Information Awareness' (TIA) project, the brainchild of
a leading player in the notorious Iran-Contra scandal
during the government of former president Ronald Reagan,
is designed to create "a virtual, centralized, grand
database" that includes the financial, medical,
communication and travel records of virtually everyone
entering or living in the US.
The idea was
brought to the Defense Department immediately after the
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by retired Admiral
John Poindexter, Reagan's national security advisor,
who, since his disgraced role in the Iran-Contra affair,
has been working in the data technology field.
Earlier this year, Poindexter was named to head
the Information Awareness Office of the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon office
that works with the private sector to develop
cutting-edge technologies (such as the Internet) with
military or defense applications.
The TIA system
would be designed to scan the patterns of people's
conduct - including, for example, their use of the
Internet, medical records and credit card purchases - to
determine who might be engaged in terrorist or related
hostile activity against the US.
Concern among
civil libertarians - which has risen steadily since the
attacks due to the expansion of the FBI's spying
authority and a series of court decisions upholding the
detention powers of the executive branch - has
mushroomed since details about the project were first
published by the New York Times earlier this month.
Critics say the system could well lead to a
"surveillance state".
The Fourth Amendment of
the US constitution, which forbids unreasonable
"searches and seizures", is one of the most sensitive in
the Bill of Rights. In addition, the military has long
been banned from engaging in domestic law enforcement
and surveillance. "This could be the perfect storm for
civil liberties in America," says Marc Rotenberg,
director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center
(EPIC).
He noted that, once developed by the
military, the technology would probably be given to the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) or the agency
created as a result of the Homeland Security Act, which
was signed into law by President George W Bush on
Monday. "The outcome [would be] a system of national
surveillance of the American public," added Rotenberg.
"If the Pentagon has its way, every American -
from the Nebraska farmer to the Wall Street banker -
will find themselves under the accusatory cyber stare of
a powerful national security apparatus," said Laura
Murphy of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
In opposing the plan, traditional civil
libertarians are being joined by right-wingers, whose
historic distrust of big government appears to be
overcoming their fears of terrorism. Many on the far
right have also grown increasingly angry with one of
their own, Attorney-General John Ashcroft, for using the
September 11 attacks as the justification to expand the
powers of government prosecutors and the FBI at the
expense of individual liberties.
The Justice
Department "seems to be running amok and out of
control", complained the just-retired Republican
Majority Leader in the House of Representatives, Dick
Armey, last month. "[It] is the biggest threat to
personal liberty in the country."
Armey has
reportedly signed on with the ACLU, as had former
ultra-right-wing Bob Barr, to lobby Congress against any
extension of the TIA. This weekend, Barr called the TIA
"outrageous" and chided Congress for not yet acting to
limit it. "You would think the Pentagon planning a
system to peek at personal data would get a little more
attention," he said.
Newspapers are also getting
into the act. "Congress should shut down the program
pending a thorough investigation," the Times said last
week, while the Washington Post called at the very least
for the appointment of an outside committee to oversee
the office's plans before it proceeds.
The
Pentagon insists that the plan is innocent and, when
completed, any new search system will be run by domestic
agencies subject to normal constitutional and legal
safeguards. "It is absurd to think that DARPA is somehow
trying to become another police agency," said Under
Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Logistics, and
Technology Edward C "Pete" Aldridge at a briefing last
week.
"DARPA's purpose is to demonstrate the
feasibility of this technology. If it proves useful,
[TIA] will then be turned over to the intelligence,
counter-intelligence, and law enforcement communities as
a tool to help them in their battle against domestic
terrorism." He also insisted that only US$10 million had
been budgeted for the project, an assertion strongly
contested by civil liberties groups.
Citing
DARPA's own documents, for example, EPIC's Rotenberg
said Monday that $243 million had already been earmarked
for the project.
Other critics have noted that
the agency has a long history of secrecy. In a letter to
Senate leaders a week ago, 30 civil liberties groups
complained that DARPA has "resisted lawful requests for
information about the program pursuant to the Freedom of
Information Act".
Poindexter's position as head
of the TIA office is probably not helping the
government's cause. The unflappable, pipe-smoking
admiral, who achieved the top of his class at the US
Naval Academy, was the highest-ranking Reagan official
convicted of lying to Congress about the illegal scheme
to divert profits made from secretly selling weapons to
Iran to the Nicaraguan Contras.
While an appeals
court later overturned his conviction, Poindexter has
never expressed regret for his part in the affair,
which, among other things, included ordering then
Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North to lie about his role in
the scandal.
When Poindexter's return to
government was first announced last January, White House
spokesman Ari Fleischer defended his appointment by
saying, "The President thinks that Admiral Poindexter
has served our nation very well."
Why Poindexter
was chosen to run the TIA program was explained last
week by Aldridge. "John Poindexter has a passion for
this project. He has an enthusiasm for this project,"
said the Pentagon's Aldridge.
Adding to the
sense that the TIA program is indeed something out of
the pages of Orwell's classic novel 1984 are the
symbols for Poindexter's office: a pyramid with an
all-seeing eye and the Latin motto, Scientia Est
Potentia (Knowledge is Power).
(Inter Press
Service)
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