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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gamesmistress who wrote (132394)	8/14/2005 12:25:13 PM
From: gamesmistress	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793822

More about Zelikow, from the JustOneMinute blog: Commission response to the their first briefing on Able Danger in Oct. 2003. But here is their opening sentence: On October 21, 2003, Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, two senior Commission staff members, and a representative of the executive branch, met at Bagram Base, Afghanistan, with three individuals doing intelligence work for the Department of Defense. And who is Philip Zelikow? Currently he is with the State Dept., but at the time of the Commission, he was criticized for being too close to the Bush team, and especially Condi Rice - he coauthored a book with her, led the transition briefings on terror, and was allegedly instrumental in demoting Richard Clarke. But that is not the interesting bit! Before joining the 9/11 Commission Mr. Zelikow was "the Executive Director of the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age (2002-2003). This task force investigated ways of developing an information network to prevent terrorism while protecting citizens' civil liberties." How about that? The fellow who led the first Able Danger de-briefing was also an expert in terrorism and information management. Did he, or the Markle Foundation, have thoughts about data-mining? Indeed they did - we take this from their press release: As the recent controversies surrounding DARPA's Terrorist Information Awareness program and an Army contractor's use of Jet Blue passenger data demonstrate, government access to, and use of, privately held data remains a vexing problem. In its report, the Task Force notes that the government should effectively utilize the valuable information that is held in private hands, but only within a system of rules and guidelines designed to protect civil liberties. Since it is not possible for the nation to harden all potential targets against terrorist attack, the Task Force concludes that the government must rely on information to detect, prevent, and effectively respond to attacks. The travel, hotel, financial, immigration, health, or educational records of a person suspected by the government to be a terrorist may hold information that is vital to unveiling both his intentions and those of other terrorists. However, the Task Force also concludes that the government should not have routine access to personally identifying information even if it is widely available to the public. If government is to sustain public support for its efforts, it must demonstrate that the information it seeks to acquire is genuinely important to the security mission and is obtained and used in a way that minimizes its impact on privacy and civil liberties. Does this mean that Mr. Zelikow would prefer to quash news of "Able Danger", if it really had been a successful data-mining program? Who knows? The full report is at the Markle Foundation website. And the Washington Post, in their coverage of the Foundation press release, teases us with this: The report also said the administration mishandled several promising programs to mine private sector databases for signs of terrorist activity by failing to set clear policy guidelines for the government's collection and use of data on Americans' everyday activities. As time permits, I hope to read through the full effort. However, this is what we have a blogosphere for... justoneminute.typepad.com