~~~as forwarded to me below~
From: "Viviane Lerner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Infoshop" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Prog. Review" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "KBOO" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
"David McReynolds" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 13:42:41 -0800
Subject: [Infoshop News] Outsourcing Big Brother
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.public-i.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=484&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0
&L5=0
December 17, 2002
Special Report
Outsourcing Big Brother: Office of Total Information Awareness Relies on
Private Sector to Track Americans
By Adam Mayle and Alex Knott
RELATED COMMENTARY
Read the Commentary, Total Information Awareness: A Chance Encounter Raises
Questions
The Total Information Awareness System, the controversial Pentagon research
program that aims to gather and analyze a vast array of information on
Americans, has hired at least eight private companies to work on the effort.
Since 1997, those companies have won contracts from the Defense Department
agency that oversees the program worth $88 million, the Center for Public
Integrity has learned.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which oversees the
Total Information Awareness System (TIA), awarded 13 contracts to Booz Allen
& Hamilton amounting to more than $23 million. Lockheed Martin Corporation
had 23 contracts worth $27 million; the Schafer Corporation had 9 contracts
totaling $15 million. Other prominent contractors involved in the TIA
program include SRS Technologies, Adroit Systems, CACI Dynamic Systems,
Syntek Technologies, and ASI Systems International.
TIA itself was first proposed by an employee of a private contractor. John
Poindexter, who worked on DARPA projects for Syntek, an Arlington, Va.-based
technical and engineering services firm, suggested the program in the wake
of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Poindexter, who headed the
National Security Council during the Reagan administration, was convicted in
1990 on five felony counts for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal. The
convictions were overturned in 1991 because he had been given immunity for
his testimony during the congressional investigation of the affair. On Jan.
14, 2002, he returned to the government as the director of the Information
Awareness Office.
TIA draws heavily on the private sector. Five of the eight contractors
identified by the Center are involved in evaluating future contracts for the
program. Grey E. Burkhart, an associate of Booz Allen Hamilton, identifies
himself on his resume as “assistant project manager” of TIA system
implementation. Even the phrase “Total Information Awareness” has a private
pedigree—Visual Analytics, Inc., a Poolesville, Md.-based software developer
and DARPA contractor, has applied for a trademark for the phrase.
In addition, the Center found that at least 24 universities received almost
$10 million during the last five years to do research on TIA-related
projects. Some of the largest grants went to Cornell University, Columbia
University and University of California, Berkeley and dealt with the TIA's
language translation program, Translingual Information Detection,
Extraction, and Summarization.
“DARPA doesn’t do any of its own research,” Jan Walker, a spokeswoman for
the agency, told the Center. She also said that DARPA doesn’t require
private contractors to share their research solely with DARPA. “The
government benefits when there are commercial applications [from DARPA
research] because it keeps the cost down,” she said. Any limitations on
commercial use are negotiated “on a case by case basis,” she said, adding
that, “Many of the things DARPA does have commercial applications.”
DARPA employs 240 people and oversees a budget of roughly $2 billion,
according to its Website. It relies heavily on outside contractors. Some act
as “systems engineering technical assistance,” or SETA contractors, who
assist DARPA in “managing the efforts and representing the program with
Congress, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the military services
and/or involved unified commander.” Typical projects involve five to ten
contractors, two universities, and budgets between $10 and $40 million.
DARPA’s Website also notes that the best program managers—the agency’s
employees who oversee the contractors—“have always been freewheeling zealots
in pursuit of their goals…”
A lack of oversight
Congress, which exercises oversight of the executive branch and the
military, has not held a single public hearing on TIA and sources on the
Hill suggested that members know little about it. In a Nov. 22, 2002,
letter, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) asked the inspector general of the
Defense Department to “conduct a complete and thorough review of the TIA
program.” Noting that available information regarding TIA was not
sufficient, Grassley wrote that “[the Defense Department’s] comments (about
DARPA) only provide few answers and invite many more questions.”
Grassley questioned the parameters and scope of TIA, how Poindexter was
selected to head it, and what protections are in place to ensure civil
liberties are not violated.
The Defense Department has not begun an inquiry. “They have it under
consideration,” Susan Hansen, a spokesperson at the Defense Department, told
the Center. “I have not heard of any final decision about the status.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said that she plans to introduce
legislation to address any threats to the privacy rights of Americans that
TIA poses.
Despite Congress’ lack of knowledge about the program, the overall budget
for TIA programs is increasing, and will nearly triple from $43 million in
fiscal year 2001 to $110 million in fiscal year 2003. According to
declassified budgets released recently from DARPA, some projects that have
existed since 1996 will receive similar spending boosts now that the TIA
office has been officially created. For instance, a TIA project called
Wargaming the Asymmetric Environment grew from $6.8 million in fiscal year
2001 to $18.5 million in fiscal year 2003.
An ongoing effort
The stated goal of TIA, which began in the 2002 fiscal year, is “to
revolutionize the ability of the United States to detect, classify and
identify foreign terrorists—and decipher their plans—and thereby enable the
U.S. to take timely action to successfully preempt and defeat terrorist
acts.” To accomplish this, the program seeks to combine several kinds of
information—financial, education, travel, medical, veterinary,
transportation and housing transactional records; face, finger print, and
other identifying data—into databases.
TIA draws heavily on other DARPA research projects that were ongoing long
before Sept. 11, 2001. For example, Project Genoa, a computer program
designed to rapidly analyze data, share it and develop plans based upon it,
began prior to 1997 and was completed in the 2002 fiscal year. The Defense
Intelligence Agency has agreed to use Genoa. A Genoa II project is underway
at DARPA.
Syntek was a contractor for the Genoa Project providing “specialized
technical and programmatic” advice for more than five years. According to
his resume—which had been posted on the home page of the Information
Awareness Office (which oversees TIA) until it was removed in November along
with the resumes of other IAO personnel—Poindexter joined Syntek in 1996.
The first documented reference to Syntek’s involvement in Genoa indicates
that the company began working for DARPA by mid-1996. Since 1997 Syntek
received nine contracts from DARPA totaling $1.18 million. Poindexter worked
for Project Genoa via Syntek through 2001 before returning to the Defense
Department as the director of the Information Awareness Office (IAO).
According to financial disclosure documents filed by Poindexter, before
joining DARPA he earned $147,182 a year while working for Syntek. Poindexter
worked closely with DARPA helping to develop Project Genoa, which is now a
component of TIA. Under Poindexter’s guidance, IAO will continue to use
Syntek as a TIA contractor. He also reports receiving income for acting as a
consultant to the U.S. Government for Syntek. These days, according to the
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Poindexter is receiving a salary
of $138,200—the most of any DARPA employee and equal to the salary of DARPA
Director Tony Tether.
One month after he joined the board of directors of Saffron Technology in
September 2000, the company announced it had received funding from DARPA for
Genoa, which is now part of the TIA program.
Poindexter characterized the mission of IAO as “the integration and assured
transition of components developed in the programs Genoa, Genoa II, GENISYS,
EELD, WAE, TIDES, HumanID, and Bio-surveillance,” in an August 2002 speech
at the DARPATECH conference in Anaheim, Calif. Those programs, all of which
predate TIA and are under the aegis of the IAO, analyze and extract data,
allow the identification of individuals by their characteristic body
movements, or automatically translate Arab, Persian and other languages into
English. Poindexter explained that TIA is “the overarching program that
binds IAO’s efforts together.”
Many of the components of TIA, such as Genoa, have been ongoing projects
since the Clinton administration. And in the May 13, 1999, issue of Commerce
Business Daily, a now-superceded bulletin board for government contracts,
there is a notice from DARPA that it intended to award a company named
Integral Visuals, Inc. a purchase order for technical and engineering
support for “Project Genoa and Total Information Awareness,” suggesting that
TIA, like its components, predates the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
In a Nov. 20, 2002, news briefing, Undersecretary of Defense for
Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology Pete Aldridge disclosed that
Poindexter was the mastermind of the TIA project. Noting that Poindexter had
“a passion for this project,” Aldridge explained, “He came to us with the
project after September the 11th and volunteered it to DARPA. Tony Tether,
the director of DARPA, came over with John and briefed it to me, and I
thought it was a project worthy of pursuit.”
The private connection
Last April, IAO published a document with the bureaucratic title BAA 02-08
Information Awareness Proposer Information Pamphlet, which asks private
companies to provide “innovative research proposals in the area of
information technologies that will aid in the detection, classification,
identification, and tracking of potential foreign terrorists…and to develop
options to prevent their terrorist acts.”
The same document spells out the central role that contractors play in IAO,
which will “…use personnel from SRS Technologies, Syntek Technologies, CACI,
Schafer Corporation and Adroit Systems as special resources to assist with
the logistics of administering proposal evaluation and to provide advice on
specific technical areas.”
DARPA has hired diversified defense industry giants Lockheed-Martin and Booz
Allen & Hamilton for TIA and related projects. Booz Allen has won what may
become the largest TIA contract, potentially worth $62 million over the next
five years if DARPA exercises all the contract’s options.
Booz Allen employee Grey E. Burkhart’s resume notes that he is the
“assistant program manager for the implementation of an advanced
collaborative analysis system for the counterterrorism and intelligence
communities,” which he identifies as “Total Information Awareness (TIA)
System Implementation.” DARPA spokeswoman Walker told the Center that
Burkhart is not an employee of the government.
Burkhart has had more than 25 years of experience in strategic security,
intelligence, and telecommunications. Working in both the private and public
sectors he was a career intelligence officer, CEO of Allied Communications
Engineering, and has become a “recognized expert on in the global
proliferation of information technology.”
Burkhart’s resume also notes that he was a member of Booz Allen’s Homeland
Security Coordination Center and Tiger Team, for which he “conducted
analysis of new legislation and executive orders and assessed their impact
on current and future business.”
Big brother on campus
Private companies have not been the only players in TIA research. Dozens of
universities within and without the United States have also worked on the
program’s components for years.
Since late 2000, researchers at Georgia Tech have been working on a new
computer-based identification system called Human ID that theoretically can
take video images from a camera and distinguish people by the way that they
walk and their different mannerisms. The applications of this software could
have unlimited potential when used with satellite imaging, government video,
and even security cameras. The theory is that each person has distinctive
body movements and by recording and analyzing these movements, the
government could identify suspects even if they are wearing disguises or
have altered their appearances.
According to unclassified budget documents recently released by the Defense
Department, DARPA spent $11.8 million during the 2001 fiscal year to develop
a “pilot force protection system” for Human ID as well as create prototype
models and develop advanced sensors (p. 88.). DARPA’s new budget increases
the program’s spending to $30.1 million during the next two fiscal years to
identify the limitations of the range and accuracy of the program while
fusing multi-modal technologies to derive biometric signatures.
Overall, Georgia Tech has received four federal grants totaling $1.2 million
for the “HumanID from movement” project, beginning in the last quarter of
2000. The funds are part of a $50 million DARPA program to identify people
from a distance that encompasses 26 research projects including two from
Georgia Tech to analyze movement.
In addition to recognizing people by body movement, Human ID is working on
facial recognition and iris recognition software. These uses have been
tested on subjects at a distance of 25-150 feet, but future DARPA plans
anticipate distances as far as 500 feet.
“I do computer vision research,” said Aaron Bobick, an associate professor
at Georgia Tech researching HumanID for DARPA. “Part of it is to see how to
get computers to see things. One of things that I am working on is
understanding motion and recognizing people from a distance.”
Bobick told the Center that the research is still preliminary. “We’ve found
it to be successful in a limited number of cases but gait recognition is
really in its infancy. We don’t know how successful it will be. We are still
at the point where we don’t know what will be possible.”
DARPA projects on identification go well beyond “naked eye” visual
appearance. The defense agency is currently trying to identify potential
suspects by their unseen traits using plumes of odorant molecules. While
doing experiments on subjects as small as moths, bacteria and mammals,
scientists are finding new ways of differentiating small particles to
understand identity.
DARPA has spent more than $427,000 on four grants to the University of
Arizona dating back to 1998 to study this identification method called
“biologically-inspired search algorithms for locating unseen odor sources.”
Like gait recognition, the smell test is still in development.
Research associate Ben Coates, database editor Aron Pilhofer, and executive
director Charles Lewis contributed to this report. To write a letter to the
editor for publication, e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]. Please include a
daytime phone number.
*** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest
in receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes.***
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DARPA is "soliciting innovative proposals to (1) determine whether genetically-determined odortypes can be used to identify specific individuals, and if so (2) to develop the science and enabling technology for detecting and identifying specific individuals by such odortypes." See DARPA's presolicitation notice for the "Odortype Detection Program," December 13, here.
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