Somebody's Watching You

The tech section of Saturday's Washington Post included a report about a spy trade conference at the Ronald Reagan Building (of all places) in DC.

The spies and contractors stood side-by-side, pressing by a crowd of pitchmen at the Ronald Reagan Building.

It was an unusual gathering, a trade show and conference organized by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to promote using open sources of information such as the Internet and television broadcasts as part of the intelligence process.

Judging from the packed seminars and the crowds collecting corporate brochures, mints and pens in the exhibition hall, most everybody was there to do business.

What I found most interesting were the companies on hand selling their services.

Booz Allen Hamilton offered a service called InTrack to help collect, monitor and process data collected from the Internet and other sources. LexisNexis promoted a system for sending automated warnings of trouble abroad. There were companies selling translation systems, Web search tools and data-mining supercomputers. One of the more popular booths was Google's, though exactly what it wanted to sell the intelligence community was not clear.

Booz Allen Hamilton makes sense, as does LexisNexis ... the one that concerned me, however, was Google. Google is huge, and what implications does this have? Am I just being paranoid?

The gathering reflected the intelligence community's evolution since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Unlike Cold War-era spies, intelligence analysts and government policymakers can no longer rely primarily on cloak-and-dagger operations to keep track of global threats. Now, like businesses and other organizations, they're increasingly turning to the torrents of information available on the Internet and through other non-classified sources.

The heavy presence of contractors, both in the exhibition halls and seminar rooms, also shows the growing reliance on the private sector. About 70 percent of more than $50 billion in annual spending on intelligence now goes to corporations for everything from major computer systems to heating bills. As many as 37,000 contract employees work alongside up to 100,000 government intelligence workers, according to a recent government survey. [...]

One of the central messages from some vendors was that information on the Internet now provides most of the clues that law enforcement and intelligence officials need to do their jobs.

"It's virtually impossible to keep tabs on potential threats without finding a way to efficiently and effectively monitor the internet for content and persons of interest," said a brochure for RiverGlass, a technology firm. [...]

At the LexisNexis station, a slick brochure touted a "data analytics supercomputer" as an instant solution to intelligence dilemmas. The brochure claims the system can manage hundreds of terabytes of data -- the equivalent of many times all the holdings in the Library of Congress. "Unparalleled linking technology and analysis uncovers key connections and relationships," it says.

The Google booth displayed a high-definition video of a virtual car driving through an exact digital representation of San Francisco -- streets, buildings and all. But Google exhibitors said they were not allowed to tell a reporter why the company was there or what it did for intelligence or anything else. Visitors from the Pentagon, Marine Corps and Army Joint Information Operations Warfare Command stopped by.

Now what was that song again? I always feel like ...

Is Somebody Watching You?

Would someone please explain to me what the Democrats who voted to expand the ability of the Bush administration to spy on us were thinking?

The New York Times reports:

The White House and Congressional Republicans hailed the Senate vote as critical to plugging what they saw as dangerous gaps in the intelligence agencies’ ability to detect terrorist threats.

"I can sleep a little safer tonight," Senator Christopher S. Bond, the Missouri Republican who co-sponsored the measure, declared after the Senate vote.

The measure approved by the Senate expires in six months and would have to be re-authorized. The White House’s grudging agreement to make it temporary helped to attract the votes of some moderate Democrats who said they thought it was important for Congress to approve some version of the wiretapping bill before its recess.

The White House and Republican leaders pressed the point throughout the day that a vote against the measure would put the nation at greater risk of attack.

The following Democrats voted for the bill:

Evan Bayh (Indiana) 2011

Tom Carper (Delaware) 2013

Bob Casey (Pennsylvania) 2013

Kent Conrad (North Dakota) 2013

Dianne Feinstein (California) 2013

Daniel Inouye (Hawaii) 2011

Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota) 2013

Mary Landrieu (Louisiana) 2009

Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas) 2011

Claire McCaskill (Missouri) 2013

Barbara Mikulski (Maryland) 2011

Bill Nelson (Florida) 2013

Ben Nelson (Nebraska) 2013

Mark Pryor (Arkansas) 2009

Ken Salazar (Colorado) 2011

Jim Webb (Virginia) 2013

Senators Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd and Barack Obama all opposed the bill, as did 23 other Democrats and Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont. Do I even have to tell you how Joe Lieberman voted? I didn't think so!

Crossover voting like this usually takes place during an election year, when an elected official is feeling particularly vulnerable. We are still a long way off from the election, but with all the attention being given to the presidential election, I thought that possibly some of the others were already feeling the pressure of a re-election campaign. So I decided to take a look at when their terms ended, thinking that maybe these folks were just nervous about appearing "soft" on "terror" before the election.

Well, as you can see by the year posted next to their names, only two face re-election in 2008. This reality makes their votes even more puzzling to me. Why have these Dems decided to cave? I think it's a question we all need to be asking them.

Some Democrats and civil rights advocates accused the Senate of capitulating to White House demands by broadening the ability to eavesdrop without warrants on communications that are primarily “foreign” in nature, even if they may touch on
Americans’ phone calls and e-mail.

The measure “goes far, far beyond” the National Security Agency program that the president secretly approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin.

Caroline Frederickson, head of the American Civil Liberties Union office here, said: “The Democrats caved in to the politics of fear we’re seeing from this administration. They didn’t want to be depicted as soft on terrorism. But this measure removes any court oversight from surveillance on Americans in a large number of cases.”

If one of the Dems listed above is YOUR Senator, give them a call while they are home for the August Recess and ask them "what's up?". You deserve an answer to this very important question.