Did you sleep at a Super 8 last night? Rent a car from Avis? Ever have a credit card from Sears? Congratulations and welcome. You may be part of a growing FBI database that has been hidden from Congress.
Does it really surprise anyone that the FBI is compiling a domestic database outside the view of Congress? Or any other oversight? It seems like this is an end run around the lack of support of the Total Information Awareness System.
the FBI’s National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC) maintains a hodgepodge of data sets packed with more than 1.5 billion government and private-sector records about citizens and foreigners, the documents show, bringing the government closer than ever to implementing the "Total Information Awareness" system first dreamed up by the Pentagon in the days following the Sept. 11 attacks.
Wired has a disturbing article based on information released under FOIA requests.
The FBI has been using a combination of subpoenas and national security letters to gather a wide variety of business and personal records. Here is a list of sources known to have given over information, voluntarily or involuntarily.
• International travel records of citizens and foreigners
• Financial forms filed with the Treasury by banks and casinos
• 55,000 entries on customers of Wyndham Worldwide, which includes Ramada Inn, Days Inn, Super 8, Howard Johnson and Hawthorn Suites
• 730 records from rental-car company Avis
• 165 credit card transaction histories from Sears
• Nearly 200 million records transferred from private data brokers such Accurint, Acxiom and Choicepoint
• A reverse White Pages with 696 million names and addresses tied to U.S. phone numbers
• Log data on all calls made by federal prison inmates
• A list of all active pilots
• 500,000 names of suspected terrorists from the Unified Terrorist Watch List
• Nearly 3 million records on people cleared to drive hazardous materials on the nation’s highways
• Telephone records and wiretapped conversations captured by FBI investigations
• 17,000 traveler itineraries from the Airlines Reporting Corporation
According to the article "It’s unclear how the FBI got the records." Unclear? Perhaps there is a member or two in Congress who has the ability and insight to have the FBI clarify where the information came from.
But the documents obtained by Wired.com show that the FBI has repeatedly downplayed the databases’s capabilities when addressing critics in Congress, while simultaneously talking up — in budget documents — the system’s power to spit out the names of newly suspicious persons.
The NSAC system has been in place since 2004 and has grown to 103 full-time employees and contractors. Additionally, the long term goal is to grow to over 400 people.
I know that Congress is focused on health care reform currently. Can we not walk and chew gum at the same time? It is disturbing that the FBI seems to be engaging in "act first, ask permission later" types of behavior. And according to my understanding of the law, the FBI is not allowed to "ask permission later".