-Caveat Lector- http://www.startribune.com/stories/587/3647992.html House, Senate agree to prohibit citizens' e-mail surveillance
Adam Clymer New York Times Published Feb. 12, 2003 PENT12 WASHINGTON, D.C. -- House and Senate negotiators have agreed that a Pentagon project intended to detect terrorists by monitoring e-mail and commercial databases for health, financial and travel information cannot be used against Americans. The conferees also agreed to restrict further research on the program without extensive consultation with Congress. House leaders agreed with Senate fears about the threat to personal privacy posed by the Pentagon program, known as Total Information Awareness (TIA). So they accepted a Senate provision in the omnibus spending bill passed last month, said Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., who heads the defense appropriations subcommittee. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., senior Democrat on the subcommittee, said of the program, "Jerry's against it, and I'm against it, so we kept the Senate amendment." Of the Pentagon, he said, "They've got some crazy people over there." The only obstacles to the provision becoming law would be the failure of the conferees to reach agreement on the overall spending bill in which it is included, or a successful veto of the bill by President Bush. Lt. Cmdr. Donald Sewell, a Pentagon spokesman, defended the program, saying, "The Department of Defense still feels that it's a tool that can be used to alert us to terrorist acts before they occur." He added, "It's not a program that snoops into American citizens' privacy." One important factor in the breadth of the opposition is the fact that the project is headed by retired Adm. John Poindexter. Several members of Congress have said he is an unwelcome symbol because he was convicted of lying to Congress when he was President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser. That his conviction was reversed on the grounds that he had been given immunity for the testimony in which he lied did not mitigate congressional opinion, they said. The conferees' decision spells almost complete failure for a last- minute Pentagon effort, begun Friday, to protect TIA by establishing advisory committees to oversee it. TIA would enable a team of intelligence analysts to gather and view information from databases, pursue links between individuals and groups, respond to automatic alerts, and share information, all from their individual computers. It could link such different electronic sources as video feeds from airport surveillance cameras, credit card transactions, airline reservations and records of telephone calls. The data would be filtered through software that would constantly seek suspicious patterns. The program could be employed in support of lawful military operations outside the United States and lawful foreign intelligence operations conducted against non-U.S. citizens. The action was praised by Democrats and Republicans and by outside groups on both the political right and left. 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