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FBI & Pentagon Pay Private Firm to Spy on U.S. Citizens(11/11/05)
(Shane Harris, National Journal, November 11, 2005)
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. . . . 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. . . . 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. . . . 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. . . . 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. . . . ChoicePoint's work involves continuously tracking a "subject of interest" and notifying the government when new information has surfaced on that person. . . . "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 . . . 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. . . . 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. . . . 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. . . . U.S. citizens have few avenues to monitor how the government is using their personal data when it resides outside government hands. . . . "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."

posted by LoZo 12:24 PM