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[infowar.de] TIA ist tot - es lebe TTIC



Infowar.de, http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~bendrath/liste.html
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Das Fact Sheet des Weissen Hauses zum neuen Terrorist Threat Integration
Center (TTIC) gibt es hier:
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-12.html>

Siehe auch 
David Johnston: C.I.A Director will lead Terror Center, NYT, 29.1.2003,
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/29/politics/29TERR.html>
RB


http://news.com.com/2100-1001-982640.html

Bush proposes antiterror database plan 

By Declan McCullagh 
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
January 29, 2003, 1:06 PM PT

A forthcoming government database will compile information from all
federal agencies and the private sector on people deemed possible
terrorist threats, President Bush said Tuesday evening. 

Bush used his State of the Union address to announce the Terrorist
Threat Integration Center (TTIC), a mammoth data-collection project
intended to fuse information collected domestically by police and
internationally by spy agencies. 

"Our government must have the very best information possible, and we
will use it to make sure the right people are in the right places to
protect all our citizens," Bush said to applause from the joint houses
of Congress. 

The White House offered few details about how TTIC will evolve, but
critics of an existing data-mining program under development by the U.S.
government were quick to draw comparisons to the controversial Total
Information Awareness (TIA) project. Last week, citing privacy concerns,
the U.S. Senate voted unanimously to slap restrictions on that agency,
which is run by Adm. John Poindexter at the Defense Department. 

"It's potentially a huge repository of information concerning American
citizens," David Sobel, general counsel of the Electronic Privacy
Information Center, said of the TTIC. "There's nothing in what has been
made publicly available that would contain a limitation on such
collection. To what extent, if any, will this system collect and
maintain information on U.S. citizens?" 

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to questions on
Wednesday about what information on Americans would be accessible to the
TTIC. One government official with knowledge of the center, who spoke on
condition of anonymity, said it was not designed to supplant
Poindexter's efforts but was instead "an effort by the president to
bring together elements of agencies that are focused on terrorism." 

Bush's announcement of the TTIC is the latest step in a massive push
after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to increase data-sharing
between U.S. police and spy agencies. Congress removed many barriers to
data exchange in the USA Patriot Act, and Attorney General John Ashcroft
in September 2002 announced rules designed to formalize the "sharing of
information between federal law enforcement and the U.S. intelligence
community." 

Ashcroft applauded the project in a statement distributed after Bush's
speech. "The TTIC will ensure that terrorist threat-related information
is integrated and analyzed comprehensively across agency lines and then
provided to the federal, state and local officials who need it most,"
Ashcroft said. "We will be able to optimize our ability to analyze
information, form the most comprehensive possible threat picture and
develop the plans we need to prevent terrorist attacks." 

The project's head, once selected, will report to CIA Director George
Tenet. The center will operate in collaboration with the FBI and the new
Department of Homeland Security and have access to "all intelligence
information" available to the government, including data collected by
the National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency. 

TTIC also will "maintain an up-to-date database of known and suspected
terrorists that will be accessible to federal and nonfederal officials
and entities, as appropriate," according to a fact sheet prepared by the
White House. 

Lee Tien, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), said:
"Maybe their strategy is to duck all those questions and go ahead with
programs that don't have any connection to Poindexter and get away from
the swamp that TIA is in. It sounds to me that in anticipation of folks
like (Sen. Chuck) Grassley, who have complained about the Defense
Department being involved domestically, they're trying to ward off that
criticism." 

Grassley, a prominent Republican and chairman of the Senate Finance
committee, this month lent his voice to the growing criticism of the
Pentagon's TIA project. Grassley said he was concerned that the FBI was
closer to using that project than it had previously acknowledged. Last
year, Bush chose Poindexter to oversee TIA, a move that drew sharp
criticism because of the former admiral's central involvement in the
Iran-Contra scandal. 

A spokeswoman for Grassley said the senator would review the TTIC
proposal but did not immediately have a comment. 

It's not clear how much data-mining TTIC will do, but the White House's
description says it will "fuse and analyze all-source information" and
ensure that "information from all sources is shared, integrated, and
analyzed seamlessly." 

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., has introduced a bill to regulate
"data-mining technology" in use by the government that could, if
enacted, apply to TTIC. 

The TTIC is charged both with overseeing a "national counterterrorism
tasking and requirements system" and with maintaining shared databases. 

That means the center will be able to order the FBI, CIA or NSA to
collect information on someone, according to Jim Dempsey, the executive
director of the Center for Democracy and Technology. 

"The fact that you can task and that you can access the raw
intelligence, the raw take of the collectors, makes it almost irrelevant
that you don't have your own collection," Dempsey said. "This presents
the centralization of control over collection and access to information
on a scale we've never seen before."

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