Outsourcing Big Brother: Office of Total Information Awareness Relies on
Private Sector to Track Americans
By Adam Mayle and Alex Knott
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 $138,200the 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.
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