Pentagon names boards to oversee computer surveillance

4.00pm

WASHINGTON - The US Defence Department, under pressure from Congress and privacy advocates, today announced the formation of two panels to oversee a project aimed at scouring computer databases for terrorist threats.

Critics, both liberal and conservative, have expressed worry that the Total Information Awareness project will trample privacy rights by allowing for electronic surveillance of personal data of all Americans.

The Pentagon has argued that the goal of the project is to detect patterns in transactions data such as credit card bills and travel records to nip terrorist plots in the bud. They say the concept is "promising" but still in the early stages.

Today's move came two weeks after the Senate passed a measure to bar funding for the programme until the Pentagon fully explains it and assesses its impact on civil liberties.

Edward "Pete" Aldridge, under secretary of defence for acquisition, technology and logistics, said he will head an internal oversight board created within the Defence Department whose members will be senior Pentagon officials.

He said a federal advisory committee established outside the Pentagon will be headed by Newton Minow, a professor of communications law at Northwestern University in Illinois.

During a Pentagon briefing, Aldridge said retired Adm. John Poindexter, a former White House national security adviser, remained in charge of the programme.

But Aldridge did not answer directly when asked if Poindexter would head the project into the future, saying, "I don't want to get into personalities, and I really don't want to debate the merits of TIA." He later said he was not suggesting any changes in leadership.

The project's critics have expressed concern that the project is headed by Poindexter, who was convicted of deceiving Congress in the Reagan administration's Iran-contra scandal. His conviction was set aside on the grounds that his immunised congressional testimony improperly had been used against him.

President George W Bush's budget for the fiscal year starting October 1 calls for TIA to get US$20 million ($36 million), Aldridge said. It gets US$10 million ($18 million) in the current year's budget.

A spending bill that contains the Senate amendment barring TIA funding is in the hands of a committee of Senate and House of Representatives negotiators.

Aldridge said he believed the creation of the two boards addresses some of the concerns of congressional critics, and said the Pentagon had briefed Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and sponsor of the amendment, about the move.

"We think we can probably come to a compromise that is acceptable to us," Aldridge said.

Another Pentagon official, Michael Wynne, said with the establishment of the two boards, "we are instituting the kind of oversight that, in fact, they wanted us to."

The internal Pentagon panel is slated to oversee and monitor the way terrorist tracking tools are employed and set rules for how such methods are used within the department and how they would be used outside the department, officials said.

Its first meeting is set for later this month.

The seven-member outside advisory board is intended to advise the secretary of defence on policy and legal issues prompted by the development and possible application of advanced technology to help identify terrorist threats, officials said. Other members include noted First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, former US Attorney General Griffin Bell and former White House counsel Lloyd Cutler.

The boards will help ensure that the project develops its methods in a manner consistent with "US constitutional law, US statutory law and American values related to privacy," the Pentagon said in a statement.

- REUTERS

Herald feature: Privacy

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