Data Mining You: How the Intelligence Community Is Creating a New American World

[marmar]

from TomDispatch:



Data Mining You
How the Intelligence Community Is Creating a New American World

By Tom Engelhardt


I was out of the country only nine days, hardly a blink in time, but time enough, as it happened, for another small, airless room to be added to the American national security labyrinth. On March 22nd, Attorney General Eric Holder and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Jr. signed off on new guidelines allowing the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), a post-9/11 creation, to hold on to information about Americans in no way known to be connected to terrorism -- about you and me, that is -- for up to five years. (Its previous outer limit was 180 days.) This, Clapper claimed, “will enable NCTC to accomplish its mission more practically and effectively.”

Joseph K., that icon of single-lettered anonymity from Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial, would undoubtedly have felt right at home in Clapper’s Washington. George Orwell would surely have had a few pungent words to say about those anodyne words “practically and effectively,” not to speak of “mission.”

For most Americans, though, it was just life as we’ve known it since September 11, 2001, since we scared ourselves to death and accepted that just about anything goes, as long as it supposedly involves protecting us from terrorists. Basic information or misinformation, possibly about you, is to be stored away for five years -- or until some other attorney general and director of national intelligence think it’s even more practical and effective to keep you on file for 10 years, 20 years, or until death do us part -- and it hardly made a ripple.

If Americans were to hoist a flag designed for this moment, it might read “Tread on Me” and use that classic illustration of the boa constrictor swallowing an elephant from Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. That, at least, would catch something of the absurdity of what the National Security Complex has decided to swallow of our American world. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175524/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_the_intelligence_bureaucracy_that_ate_our_world/#more

[leveymg]

1. I think actually 5 yrs is a reduction from the permanant retention NSA had in place under the

classified Presidential Order in place since 2001. Six months was a public fiction.

[kenny blankenship]

2. Small fact-check error on Tom's piece

Last edited Tue Apr 3, 2012, 10:00 PM - Edit history (2)

The National Counter-Terrorism Center, or NCTC, was created under the Bush Administration and held onto data of innocent civilians suspected of only potential ties to terrorism for no particular reasons, for up to 6 months... The agency created today will hold onto the data of persons charged with nothing and unconnected to known terrorist networks, but deemed potentially suspicious anyhow, for up to 5 years and is officially known as the National Counter-Counter-Counter-Terrorism Center or NCCCTC. Citizens convicted of no crime nor charged with any crime will be maintained on this new list and monitored closely, because Google returned results showing one or more pages on which the middle names of people on the first list (maintained by NCTC) appeared within 30 or fewer lines of people whose first names appeared on the second list (held by the NCCCTC.)

The new news however, is that the National Counter-Counter-Counter-Counter-Counter-Counter-Terrorism Center which was revealed to have antedated the NCCCTC by three years, will compile and keep tabs on a third list of individuals, who either once lived in the same zipcodes as people on the second list, or did not give out their phone number to a cashier in a "big box store" when requested, purchase hummus in grocery stores and restaurants, may have rented a truck in Arizona, allegedly knew someone who looked like people on the first list, appear to avoid purchasing hummus, once tried to buy something with cash, appear in some satellite photographs to be wearing a "hoodie", have an interest in Kabbalah, or else have Social Security numbers beginning with the digit "1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6","7","8", or "9". Data retention policies of the NCCCCCCTC are unknown, and classified at this time, but are assumed to be infinite.

The database storage needed for the maintenance and operations of the NCCCCCCTC's potentially contingent suspected list of terrorist influenced and cryptofiliated individuals was to be housed on the continent of Australia, once that landmass was cleared of its inhabitants. Nativist cries that "Offshoring our data is exporting our jobs!" soon silenced themselves in the face of the burgeoning requirements of storage: North America obviously could not house both itself and all of its recorded conversations, billing records, search returns, emails, pharmacy receipts, skype chats, server logs and dirty pictures. Even at 100% utilization the surface area Down Under has been shown to be inadequate for future requirements. Critics are doubtful that the pace of global warming will be rapid enough to render Antarctica available as a practical substitute before Australia reaches saturation and overcapacity. Artificial islands are in the planning stage.

[JDPriestly]

3. The end of the individual.

There can be no individualism without the possibility of privacy and anonymity.

This program abolishes privacy and the possibility of anonymity with one swoop.

They are making it us versus us. It's supposed to be us versus somebody else.

[BlueIris]

4. Very disheartening.

It's sad for me to see the government continuing to go this route.