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Interesting that the UK and Europe seemingly focused internally for
protection and that the USA states it is focusing externally to protect
itself, although both approaches appear paradoxically to deny some of the
highly motivated attempts being undertaken to control the perceived
problems.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/29/AR2006082901
520.html
Ian
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Clarification to This Article
An Aug. 30 article stated that David Sobel, senior counsel of the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, said he learned under Freedom of Information Act
disclosure
that 250 million airline passenger records were contained in the FBI's
Investigative Data Warehouse database. The FBI said last week that those
records
are stored in a separate "data warehouse" specific to the Sept. 11, 2001,
investigation that cannot be accessed through the IDW system. The IDW
contains
no general airline passenger information and does not allow for real-time
search
access, FBI officials said.
FBI Shows Off Counterterrorism Database
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 30, 2006; Page A06
The FBI has built a database with more than 659 million records -- including
terrorist watch lists, intelligence cables and financial transactions --
culled
from more than 50 FBI and other government agency sources. The system is one
of
the most powerful data analysis tools available to law enforcement and
counterterrorism agents, FBI officials said yesterday.
The FBI demonstrated the database to reporters yesterday in part to address
criticism that its technology was failing and outdated as the fifth
anniversary
of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks nears.
Privacy advocates said the Investigative Data Warehouse, launched in January
2004, raises concerns about how long the government stores such information
and
about the right of citizens to know what records are kept and correct
information that is wrong.
The data warehouse is an effort to "connect the dots" that the FBI was
accused
of missing in the months before the 2001 attacks, bureau officials said.
About a
quarter of the information comes from the FBI's records and criminal case
files.
The rest -- including suspicious financial activity reports, no-fly lists,
and
lost and stolen passport data -- comes from the Treasury, State and Homeland
Security departments and the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
"That's where the real knowledge comes from . . . sharing information," said
Gurvais Grigg, acting director of the FBI's Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task
Force, who helped develop the system.
In a demonstration, Grigg sat at a computer and typed in the name "Mohammad
Atta," one of the 19 hijackers in 2001. The system can handle variants of
names
and up to 29 variants on birth dates. He typed "flight training" in the
query
box and pulled up 250 articles relating to Atta.
The system, designed by Chiliad Inc. of Amherst, Mass., can be programmed to
send alerts to agents on new information, Grigg said. Names, Social Security
numbers and driver's license details can be linked and cross-matched across
hundreds of millions of records.
No top secret information is in the system, officials said.
Grigg said that before 2002, it would take 32,222 hours to run 1,000 names
and
birth dates across 50 databases. Now agents can make such a search in 30
minutes
or less, he said.
The 13,000 agents and analysts who use the system make an average 1 million
queries a month, Grigg said. The system does not reach into the databases
themselves but mines copies that are updated regularly, he said.
Irrelevant information can be purged or restricted, and incorrect
information is
corrected, he said. Willie T. Hulon, executive assistant director of the
FBI's
National Security Branch, said that generally information is not removed
from
the system unless there is "cause for removal."
Every data source is reviewed by security, legal and technology staff
members,
and a privacy impact statement is created, Grigg said. The FBI conducts
in-house
auditing so that each query can be tracked, he said.
David Sobel, senior counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the
Federal Register has no record of the creation of such a system, a basic
requirement of the Privacy Act. He also said the FBI's use of an internal
privacy assessment undercuts the intent of the privacy law.
FBI officials said the database is in "full compliance" with the law.
Sobel said he learned under a Freedom of Information Act disclosure last
week
that the system includes 250 million airline passenger records, stored
permanently.
"It appears to be the largest collection of personal data ever amassed by
the
federal government," he said. "When they develop the capability to
cross-reference and data-mine all these previously separate sources of
information, there are significant new privacy issues that need to be
publicly
debated."
Michael Morehart, chief of the FBI's Terrorist Financing Operations Section,
has
testified to Congress about some aspects of the system. He said that
Treasury
Department documents included in the database have helped counterterrorism
investigations significantly.
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