CHEAPINT.PROMIS.or Assassinating Larry threat?

[mattd]

WASHINGTON, DC -- Recent moves to beef up intelligence gathering in the 
wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks have civil libertarians 
concerned that law enforcement agencies will entangle many law abiding 
citizens and social justice groups in their surveillance missions. 
Intelligence networks are setting their sights on the Internet, which up to 
now has had no clear privacy guidelines. Under the provisions of the 
inaptly named anti-terrorism act, "USA-PATRIOT," the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation (FBI), National Security Agency (NSA), Central Intelligence 
Agency (CIA), and a number of other smaller law enforcement agencies are 
looking for ways to monitor the Internet and mine useful intelligence from 
it. And new technology makes it easier than ever to spy on the Internet.
Although law enforcement and intelligence agencies claim they are merely 
looking for information to counter future acts of terrorism, the definition 
of "terrorism" is being expanded to cover non-violent groups that have 
traditionally used the Internet to marshal resistance to corporate-inspired 
globalization. Politicians are already painting dissent as "unpatriotic" 
and therefore somehow linked to terrorism.
Meanwhile, a phalanx of software companies, consultants, and defense 
contractors stand to reap billions of dollars over the next few years by 
selling surveillance and information-gathering systems to government 
agencies and the private sector.
Technology Already in the Hands of Law Enforcement
Law enforcement agencies like the FBI already have at their disposal a 
massive information sharing network through which federal, state, local, 
and foreign police forces can exchange information on groups felt to pose a 
threat. The system, RISSNET, or Regional Information Sharing System 
Network, which existed before the September 11th attacks, recently got a 
boost when Congress authorized additional money for it in the USA PATRIOT Act.
RISSNET is a secure intranet that connects 5,700 law enforcement agencies 
in all 50 states, as well as agencies in Ontario and Quebec, the District 
of Columbia, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Australia. 
According to sources close to the Washington Metropolitan Police, data on 
targeted local groups such as the Alliance for Global Justice, the 
anti-World Bank/International Monetary Fund activist organization, has been 
shared with other jurisdictions through RISSNET.
RISSNET has also been used to coordinate the monitoring of the activities 
of anti-globalization protestors in Seattle, Quebec City, Philadelphia, Los 
Angeles, Washington DC and Genoa. For example, when the FBI seized network 
server logs from Independent Media Center (IMC) in Seattle during the April 
2001 anti-free trade protests in Quebec City, RISSNET was used to 
coordinate activities across jurisdictional boundaries. The IMC, founded 
during the 1999 WTO protests, allows activists and independent journalists 
to post directly to its site.(anon with no logs kept,needs mirrors.pr)
State and metropolitan police intelligence units also monitor the web sites 
of activist organizations in their jurisdictions. All RISS intelligence is 
archived by an Orwellian-sounding entity called MAGLOCLEN or "Middle 
Atlantic-Great Lakes Organized Crime Law Enforcement Network." There are 
other regional RISS intelligence centers around the country with equally 
mysterious acronyms. MAGLOCLEN, a nerve center headquartered in Newtown, 
Pennsylvania, distributes political intelligence to all police departments 
hooked up to RISSNET.
MAGLOCLEN allows police investigators to link various activist groups and 
members through the Link Association Analysis sub-system, a relational data 
base that identifies the "friends and families" of groups and individuals. 
The Telephone Record Analysis sub-system can call up records of phone calls 
of targeted groups and individuals. A suspect group's banking and other 
commercial data can be monitored by the Financial Analysis sub-system. And 
through a system that would have been the envy of J. Edgar Hoover, police 
and federal agents can also call up profiles that provide specific 
information on the composition of organizations, including their membership 
lists. The Justice Department has instituted a project called RISSNET II, 
which directly links the individual databases contained within the various 
RISS centers.
The FBI also runs its own intranet called Law Enforcement On-line or "LEO," 
which allows it to communicate intelligence with select other law 
enforcement agencies. In the aftermath of September 11th , the FBI is under 
pressure to open up LEO to more police agencies so they can have access to 
more real-time intelligence. If Attorney General John Ashcroft lifts 
restrictions placed on the FBI's collection of political intelligence, 
undoubtedly information on the First Amendment activities of American 
citizens will wind up in the Bureau's computer databases.
"There has been no indication that the FBI needs expanded spying powers," 
says Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Michael Ratner. "We should 
learn from history; spying on dissent is not only unlawful but it is abusive."
This kind of surveillance is not new. In the 1960s and 70s, the FBI's 
Counter Intelligence Program, known as COINTELPRO, was used to gather 
personal details on the lives and habits of a wide array of activists 
ranging from public figures like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., actress Jane 
Fonda and noted pediatrician Benjamin Spock, to members of local anti-war 
and civil rights groups. This information was often used to disrupt lawful 
organizing and protest activities.
A modern-day FBI list might include any group deemed "terrorist" by any law 
enforcement agencies, the military, or criminal prosecutors. That could 
subject organizations as varied -- and unconnected to terrorism -- as Earth 
First, Greenpeace, the American Indian Movement, the Zapatista National 
Liberation Front, ACT UP, and their supporters to a wide array of high-tech 
surveillance and eavesdropping tools.
Chief among spy agency tools is an e-mail sniffing program known as 
Carnivore. Changes brought about by USA-PATRIOT allow federal law 
enforcement officials to petition a secretive federal court called the 
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for warrants to tap phones, read 
e-mail, or break and enter into homes or offices to conduct searches and 
plant bugging devices. These spy activities can be carried out without 
proof that an organization has links to terrorists or foreign intelligence 
agencies.
To read e-mail the FBI can order an Internet Service Provider to place a 
special monitoring computer called Carnivore (now renamed Data Collection 
System 1000) on its network servers. The FBI can then select the e-mail of 
surveillance targets for capture and storage. Not content with this device, 
the FBI now seeks to expand its surveillance capability to the entire Internet.
Making a Buck off of Government Spying
companies that are positioning themselves to help the government surveill 
the web came out in force at a recent Homeland Security Conference in 
Washington. They included Oracle, Microsoft, Information Builders, Choice 
Point, Man Tech, AMS, and Booz Allen & Hamilton. Government speakers from 
civilian and military agencies all stressed that they urgently need the 
technology to store surveillance-derived intelligence and exchange it with 
other agencies. If these corporations step up to the plate on developing 
new surveillance, monitoring, and biometric ID systems, they stand to make 
billions.
Companies like Top Layer Networks, Inc. of Westboro, Massachusetts, are 
developing ways for FBI to install surveillance systems at a few key 
Internet hubs which would allow federal agents to remotely flip a switch 
and pound a few keys to begin monitoring the e-mail or web-based mail of 
any targeted group or individual. According to chief Top Layer engineer Ken 
Georgiades, the firm is working with a number of partners to develop new 
standards for the legal interception of communications at the Internet 
Service Provider level and at higher gigabit speeds.
The higher gigabit intercept equipment would be placed at major Internet 
backbone hubs in strategic locations like Washington, DC, the San Francisco 
Bay Area, Chicago, Dallas, and Los Angeles. Georgiades said that the1994 
Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) does not currently 
extend to the Internet and only applies to telecommunications companies. 
However, the fact that Top Layer and its unspecified partners are ramping 
up to deliver CALEA-like wiretapping services for the Internet indicates 
the FBI sees the power of CALEA growing beyond phone lines to the web. And 
Georgiades pointed out that foreign governments are under no such 
constraints and can use Internet snooping equipment under existing current 
wiretapping laws.
David Banisar, Research Fellow at Harvard's Information Infrastructure 
Project, said such systems "set a dangerous precedent to allow law 
enforcement and intelligence agencies to run the communications system." He 
added, "these agencies take an over-inclusive view of who they think are 
the enemies and its likely that civil and human rights groups will, again, 
be monitored for no legitimate reason."
The large defense and intelligence consulting and engineering firm Booz, 
Allen & Hamilton has not only developed the FBI's Carnivore capability but 
it has assisted the bureau in ensuring that all telecommunications 
companies engineer their systems to ensure they are "wiretap friendly." The 
companies are required by the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement 
Act to ensure the FBI has access to all forms of telecommunications, 
including cellular calls.
What if a target decides to use encryption to protect their e-mail from 
interception? That is not a problem for the FBI. Booz Allen & Hamilton has 
helped develop a system code-named Magic Lantern, which permits a virus 
containing a key logging program to be secretly transmitted to a recipient. 
After installing itself on the target's computer, any time the target types 
in a password to decrypt a message, that same password is immediately 
picked up by Magic Lantern and transmitted to the FBI. Essentially, the FBI 
has a virtual master key to break any encryption program used by a 
surveillance target.
A companion program to Magic Lantern, code named Cyber Knight, is a 
relational database system that compares and matches information from 
e-mail, Internet relay chats, instant messages, and Internet voice 
communications.
Not to be outdone by the FBI, the CIA has also been extremely active in 
developing software than can dig deep within the Internet to harvest 
information. The CIA has relied heavily on its wholly-owned and operated 
proprietary Silicon Valley company, IN-Q-TEL, to fund research and 
development for Internet snooping software. IN-Q-TEL's President and Chief 
Executive Officer Gilman Louie is to keynote a January 2002 Las Vegas 
seminar on the use of emerging intelligence technology to search and 
analyze the web. He is to be joined by Joan Dempsey, the Deputy Director of 
the CIA for Intelligence Community Management. IN-Q-TEL's web page 
describes the aggressive attitude the CIA is taking toward ensuring new 
technologies come complete with the spy agency's seal of approval, 
"IN-Q-TEL strives to extend the Agency's access to new IT companies, 
solutions, and approaches to address their priority problems."
Assisting the government in its goals to gather massive amounts of personal 
information on citizens and non-citizens, is a company that owes its very 
existence to the CIA. Oracle, Inc. Chairman Larry Ellison has offered to 
provide to the government free of charge the database software required to 
establish an interactive national ID card system. Oracle got its start when 
the CIA gave Ellison a contract in the 1970s to design a system to enable 
the agency to store and retrieve massive amounts if information in 
databases. Not coincidentally, the code name of that CIA project was "Oracle."
The rush by the government to monitor the Internet has the backing of a 
group of federal contract research facilities that have pounded out report 
after report warning about the threat of cyberspace to national security. 
These "think tanks" include Rand Corporation and Analytical Services 
Corporation (ANSER). They are assisted in this policy laundering effort by 
the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the K Street rest home 
for former Pentagon, intelligence, and State Department political appointees.
But all the technology in the world will not protect citizens from 
terrorist attacks, unless the government knows how to use the information 
effectively. As the government and a few selected companies and think tanks 
push for new surveillance laws and more monitoring of the Internet and 
telecommunications in general, the words of Mary Schiavo, the 
Transportation Department's former Inspector General and outspoken critic 
of lax airline security, are particularly poignant. Speaking in Washington 
on December 18, Schiavo pointed out that the "United States already had 
laws to prevent what happened on September 11th . . . they weren't being 
enforced."

Wayne Madsen is a Washington-based journalist who covers intelligence, 
national security, and foreign affairs. He is also a Senior Fellow of the 
Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington, DC and author 
of "Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999" (Mellen Press).Kill 
the President.
USAma struck in self defence,I propose all APsters do the same and select 
all federal employee's as legitimate targets.