[Commcomp] FW: FBI, Pentagon pay for access to corporate trove of public records

[George J. Perkins]

-----Original Message-----
From: George Perkins [mailto:geoperkins at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Monday, November 21, 2005 9:04 AM
To: 
Subject: FBI, Pentagon pay for access to corporate trove of public records 


Remember John Poindexter's "Total Information Awareness" proposal? 
In comparison to ChoicePoint's databases (see following news
story), his was maybe a good idea.  

-----

Excerpts:

Even though existing laws strictly limit the government's ability
to conduct surveillance on U.S. citizens, those limitations don't
apply to corporations.

Unlike government agencies, contractors are not answerable to
Congress. And the secrecy of most intelligence work makes them all
but impervious to independent oversight. If they broke or bent the
law, we might never find out.

The Center for Democracy and Technology wondered whether
government's use of private databases renders useless the federal
Privacy Act, which is supposed to protect private information.

In the wake of several security breaches this year, at ChoicePoint
and other firms, in which identity thieves accessed people's
financial records, lawmakers have proposed several bills that would
rein in the private data brokers and monitor more closely how the
government uses them. One bill, the Personal Data Privacy and
Security Act, introduced by Sens. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Patrick
Leahy, D-Vt., would require the government to establish rules
protecting privacy and security when it hires data brokers, and to
conduct regular audits of those contracts. 

-----

Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI 2nd CD) sits on the House Committee on
Energy and Commerce's subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer
Protection.  That subcommittee is chartered, among other things,
to oversee Homeland security-related aspects of commerce, including
cybersecurity.  See
http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/subcommittees/Commerce_Trade_and_Consumer_P
rotection.htm

Read the full news story:
http://govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=32802  (or scroll down,
I've pasted it below).

Action you can take:  Write your Congressperson and Senators. 
Forward this e-mail to people who may be concerned about privacy
issues.

George


-----



DAILY BRIEFING November 11, 2005


FBI, Pentagon pay for access to trove of public records 
By Shane Harris, National Journal
sharris at nationaljournal.com 

To help the government track suspected terrorists and spies who may
be visiting or residing in this country, the FBI and the Defense
Department for the past three years have been paying a
Georgia-based company for access to its vast databases that contain
billions of personal records about nearly every person -- citizens
and noncitizens alike -- in the United States.

According to federal documents obtained by National Journal and
Government Executive, among the services that ChoicePoint provides
to the government is access to a previously undisclosed, and
vaguely described, "exclusive" data-searching system. This system
in effect gives law enforcement and intelligence agents the ability
to use the private data broker to do something that they legally
can't -- keep tabs on nearly every American citizen and foreigner
in the United States.


ChoicePoint is famous for being the largest and most sophisticated
aggregator of public records on U.S. citizens and residents. The
company has built an enormous electronic cache of more than 19
billion records -- all of which are legally obtained -- that it
mines to locate criminals and suspects, their family members and
known associates, and their hidden financial assets.


Most of ChoicePoint's customers are other companies -- insurance
providers trying to spot potential scam artists applying for
policies, for instance. But the company's work for the government
is significant and growing. Using its DNA analysis lab, ChoicePoint
helped identify victims of the September 11 attacks. And the
following year, the company helped locate the Washington-area
snipers by leading investigators to the blue Chevrolet Caprice that
the two killers used in their spree. (ChoicePoint compiles hundreds
of millions of motor vehicle registrations.)


Although it has generally been known that the FBI and intelligence
agencies use ChoicePoint's people-tracking skills, federal and
company officials have refused to discuss the particulars of their
arrangements. ChoicePoint declined a request for an interview about
its work for the FBI and the Defense Department. But a set of
contract documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act,
and which the government sought to withhold for almost two years,
reveals details not previously reported about ChoicePoint's work
for the FBI's Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, called FTTTF
or "F tre F." This task force was set up soon after the 9/11
attacks to assist law enforcement and intelligence agencies in
locating foreign terrorists and their supporters in the United
States. Because the task force can't maintain records on U.S.
persons without opening an official investigation, it relies on
ChoicePoint to augment the intelligence that the government
collects through legal channels.


The documents show that ChoicePoint has provided an arsenal of data
and analysis to the task force and its partner group, the Defense
Department's Assessments and Technology Directorate, which in turn
is part of a counterintelligence unit that identifies covert
threats -- namely spies and terrorists -- to Defense Department
personnel and property. The FBI task force and the Defense
directorate share an office and have helped to identify more than
200 terrorist suspects in the United States, FBI officials say. The
partnership has also helped track suspected suicide bombers; the
FBI component, among other things, vets all foreigners attending
U.S. flight schools.


According to the contract documents, which have been heavily
redacted, in 2002 the FBI task force had an "urgent need to acquire
high-volume public record data" to help locate and track "foreign
terrorists and related activities." At that point, the task force
purchased some of the company's most popular services.


In the beginning, ChoicePoint performed search work at its own
facilities, taking "input criteria" -- a name or other identifying
data supplied by the government -- and returning useful
information, such as a subject's address or any disparity between
his name and Social Security number (a signal that the person may
have purchased a stolen number to shield his true identity).


A year later, the government's appetite for data apparently became
more sophisticated. In early 2003, the agencies ordered a set of
Internet-based services from ChoicePoint. These services, the
documents show, effectively put the power of the company's
databases at government agents' fingertips on their desktop
computers. The agencies also bought the company's AutoTrack
product, which creates "easy-to-read reports" and gives users the
"ability to locate people and assets faster ... and solve more
crimes," according to marketing materials on ChoicePoint's Web
site. And the agencies purchased ChoicePoint's "national
comprehensive reports with associates," a service that lists the
names, Social Security numbers, addresses, properties, and even
pilot licenses to which someone is connected, directly or through
known associates and relatives. FBI officials have said that such
services are an invaluable complement to traditional criminal
investigations.


But the documents indicate that ChoicePoint may have gone beyond
simply offering its commercially available products to the
government. In 2003, ChoicePoint agreed to provide access to an
"exclusive" system used to help identify terrorism suspects.
Although much of the description of the system has been redacted
from the documents -- on the grounds that it would reveal law
enforcement tactics and operations -- the portions that were
released indicate that ChoicePoint's work involves continuously
tracking a "subject of interest" and notifying the government when
new information has surfaced on that person.


After a string of redacted text about this exclusive service, the
document states, "When this new information is added and identified
as relevant new data for a subject of interest, the FTTTF will
receive electronic notification.... Additional information beyond
the identity and address data can be provided to the FTTTF with a
subpoena." In releasing the contract documents, the government said
it could not elaborate on the system, because doing so "could
certainly assist ... terrorists in circumventing detection." The
government also redacted the dollar amount of the contracts, making
it harder to assess costs and scope.


According to an outside expert on ChoicePoint who reviewed the
documents for National Journal, the exclusive service looks like
something ChoicePoint built specifically for federal agencies, and
the arrangement raises questions about whether the company is
effectively becoming an arm of the federal government.


"The language [of the contract], and ChoicePoint making their full
system available to the government and [performing] custom-tailored
searches for the government, show a high degree of cooperation,"
says Chris Hoofnagle, a researcher with the Electronic Privacy
Information Center, who has obtained ChoicePoint contracts and
corporate documents through other legal filings.


FBI officials have stated publicly that they don't use ChoicePoint
for "fishing expeditions," that they tap its services only in the
course of an official investigation. But the threshold for what
constitutes a "subject of interest" is unclear. So are the
restrictions, if any, that the government faces when it searches
private databases for information on U.S. citizens. And it's
unclear whether these restrictions differ from the rules for
investigating foreigners.


Even though existing laws strictly limit the government's ability
to conduct surveillance on U.S. citizens, those limitations don't
apply to corporations. And so, the more ChoicePoint takes on
exclusive work for the government that the government is prohibited
from doing on its own, "the more it looks like a government actor,"
Hoofnagle says.


ChoicePoint collects a dizzying variety of newly filed public
records from sources as varied as courthouses and motor vehicle
departments, any of which could be a key data point in building a
profile about a person being investigated. Standard ChoicePoint
fare includes concealed-weapons permits; marriage and death
certificates; registrations for boats, aircraft, and automobiles;
eviction notices; credit card information;
hazardous-materials-handling permits; and employment histories.


Without question, ChoicePoint provides services that the government
feels it can't live without. "The enormous number of visitors to
the U.S. and avenues of entry and exit makes it inordinately
difficult, if not impossible, to accurately account for each
entrant," the FBI task force director, Mark Tanner, told House
lawmakers in 2003. He was describing how agents use private data
brokers' information to help find people who've overstayed their
visas, a class the government deems a security risk. FBI agents
privately also sing the company's praises and say that if they
couldn't get public records from ChoicePoint, they'd have to
dispatch investigators to courthouses and clerks' offices across
the country, greatly slowing the pace of their work.


But as ChoicePoint's databases grow, Hoofnagle asks, "at what point
do [the company's] records become the equivalent of a 'system of
records,' " an official collection that is subject to government
regulation and oversight and that must be publicly announced?
Writing in the George Washington Law Review last November, two
members of the Center for Democracy and Technology wondered whether
government's use of private databases renders useless the federal
Privacy Act, which is supposed to protect private information. "If
the government is simply accessing databases created by commercial
entities for their own reasons, there may be no system of records
subject to Privacy Act requirements," the members wrote.


U.S. citizens have few avenues to monitor how the government is
using their personal data when it resides outside government hands.
"We have the legal authority to collect certain types of
information," says Ed Cogswell, an FBI spokesman. ChoicePoint is "a
commercial database, and we purchase a lot of different commercial
databases.... They have collated information that we legitimately
have the authority to obtain."


But because the FBI is so reluctant to discuss how it uses the
data, and what its own guidelines are for monitoring agents' access
to it, a cloak is cast over the government's work. "From the
perspective of an American citizen, this is another example where a
company that's built a massive personal-information database is
being used regularly by the government to track citizens," says
Hoofnagle, who supports using ChoicePoint for terrorism
investigations but wants more public assurances that the
information isn't being misused.


Congress wants similar assurances. In the wake of several security
breaches this year, at ChoicePoint and other firms, in which
identity thieves accessed people's financial records, lawmakers
have proposed several bills that would rein in the private data
brokers and monitor more closely how the government uses them. One
bill, the Personal Data Privacy and Security Act, introduced by
Sens. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., would require
the government to establish rules protecting privacy and security
when it hires data brokers, and to conduct regular audits of those
contracts. 


Privacy advocates following the bills say that they're weaker than
legislation being pushed through in state legislatures, and that no
single congressional bill fully addresses all their concerns. But
the legislation has data brokers' attention. Hoofnagle says that
lobbying expenditures by private data collectors are up across the
industry. And this year, ChoicePoint has hired a number of lobby
shops specializing in the executive branch. One hired last month is
none other than the Ashcroft Group, founded by former Attorney
General John Ashcroft, who oversaw the establishment of the FBI
task force in 2002.


Steven Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy at
the Federation of American Scientists, says, however, that it is
always hard to monitor what private contractors do in the
intelligence field.


"Using contractors to perform sensitive intelligence or
counterintelligence work, whether it's prisoner interrogation in
Iraq or data mining in D.C., is always problematic, because their
activities are much harder to oversee," Aftergood says. "Unlike
government agencies, contractors are not answerable to Congress.
And the secrecy of most intelligence work makes them all but
impervious to independent oversight. If they broke or bent the law,
we might never find out."



This document is located at
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1105/111105nj1.htm


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-

C2005 by National Journal Group Inc. All rights reserved.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

George J. Perkins
442 Toepfer Drive
Madison, WI 53711

Mobile: 608-345-3561
E-Mail: geoperkins at yahoo.com

"The doing is the reward; the reward, the doing."  Karma Yoga