For some, the program recalls John M. Poindexter's ill-fated Total Information Awareness program, which he was developing for the Pentagon after the Sept. 11 attacks to use electronic transactions performed by millions of people daily to hunt for patterns and flag suspicious activity.
After being briefed on the domestic spying program in summer 2003, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) wrote to Vice President Dick Cheney: "As I reflected on the meeting today, and the future we face, John Poindexter's TIA project sprung to mind, exacerbating my concern regarding the direction the administration is moving with regard to security, technology and surveillance."
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday December 28, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 40 words Type of Material: Correction
Domestic spying -- An article in Sunday's Section A about the National Security Agency's domestic spying activities said an FBI "data mining" program called Carnivore was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It was created in June 2000.
Total Information Awareness was essentially killed by Congress in February 2003 over privacy concerns. But parts of it were quietly moved elsewhere and continue to receive classified funding, according to Poindexter.
In the business world, where customer information and other records are used to look for unexpected patterns and trends in people's buying habits, data mining is not particularly controversial.
But in the hands of a powerful government, critics say, data mining raises serious concern about privacy and civil liberties, and the Bush administration has used the practice aggressively.
After Sept. 11, the FBI created a data-mining program called Carnivore but shelved it after critics said it was too intrusive. A Pentagon program, Able Danger, created controversy with its pre-Sept. 11 attempts to uncover terrorist sleeper cells in the U.S. Recently, a Pentagon program aimed at protecting U.S.-based military installations has come under fire for gathering information on protest groups.
Defending Data Mining
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was not designed to accommodate data-mining projects, and some experts and knowledgeable former U.S. officials suspect that that is why the administration is circumventing it.
Because data mining entails tracing potentially millions of innocent links to find a few suspicious ones, authorities would immediately encounter problems establishing probable cause to proceed. Then, the experts say, authorities would have to obtain warrants under the surveillance act for vast numbers of phone numbers and e-mail addresses.
