New FBI database
p2pnet.net News:- The FBI is boasting about its new high-tech toy, a database with more almost 660 million records collated from FBI and the Treasury, State and Homeland Security departments and the Federal Bureau of Prisons records.
It includes terrorist watch lists, intelligence cables, suspicious financial activity reports, no-fly lists, and lost and stolen passport data, says The Washington Post, going on:
“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FBI demonstrated the database to reporters yesterday in part to address criticism that its technology was failing and outdated as the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks nears.”
No top secret information is in the system, officials said.
Gurvais Grigg, acting director of the FBI’s Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, is quoted as saying before 2002, it would take 32,222 hours to run 1,000 names and birth dates across 50 databases but, “Now agents can make such a search in 30 minutes or less”.
The EFF’s (Electronic Frontier Foundation) David Sobel said the Federal Register has no record of the creation of such a system, a basic requirement of the Privacy Act, states The Washington Post, going on.
“He also said the FBI’s use of an internal privacy assessment undercuts the intent of the privacy law,” although 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, and comprising, “the largest collection of personal data ever amassed by the federal government. 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.”
Also See:
The Washington Post – FBI Shows Off Counterterrorism Database, August 30, 2006
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September 2nd, 2006 at 3:57 am
It is almost to the point that corporate spying and government spying are the same. Both are after data without oversight that normally privacy laws would say they can not get without court approval. Whatever is the catch-phrase of the day passes for a justifiable reason to do so.
Bush has been caught up in the violating privacy laws to catch the terrorists. The EFF and several other groups have brought it to court over the willing distribution of client data without warrant from the collusion between Bell South and other providers and the government. No effort was made to do it legally, which would end at some point with the court oversight.
With the same mentality of it is ok to ignore the laws of the land in this witch hunt, it is now showing up in other arms of the government as they too seek to get all the data they can unhindered. Even closing down these methods only means they will resort to others such as buying the data from “outside contractors” that again won’t have the oversight of the courts in mind when doing so. The point has been reached where government is in collusion with corporations and there is something rotten at the heart of it. It is almost as if the corporations have poisoned the government through influence and the common man that government is to represent is no longer a consideration.
But the public can make a difference in this. All that needs be done is for the public to see that we have no less than a bunch of crooks leading the country down the hole and to throw the whole batch out along with the vested interests that seem to follow in both parties. For the now, it seems that the courts are the only branch that is looking for the average welfare of Joe Public and that’s an expensive process that not everyone can afford. There is no longer justice for the average man. The sooner the public wakes up to this the sooner we might be able to save the country from sliding down a long hole of darkness. With the rate things are going now, I honestly have little hope that this country will survive another 100 years at the present rate of neglect from the legislation that is in charge of making laws. Both parties no longer seem interested beyond lip service in the countries welfare.