New Tools for Domestic Spying, and Qualms

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

New Tools for Domestic Spying, and Qualms

December 10, 2002
By MICHAEL MOSS and FORD FESSENDEN




 

When the Federal Bureau of Investigation grew concerned
this spring that terrorists might attack using scuba gear,
it set out to identify every person who had taken diving
lessons in the previous three years.

Hundreds of dive shops and organizations gladly turned over
their records, giving agents contact information for
several million people.

"It certainly made sense to help them out," said Alison
Matherly, marketing manager for the National Association of
Underwater Instructors Worldwide. "We're all in this
together." 

But just as the effort was wrapping up in July, the F.B.I.
ran into a two-man revolt. The owners of the Reef Seekers
Dive Company in Beverly Hills, Calif., balked at turning
over the records of their clients, who include Tom Cruise
and Tommy Lee Jones - even when officials came back with a
subpoena asking for "any and all documents and other
records relating to all noncertified divers and referrals
from July 1, 1999, through July 16, 2002."

<snip>

 stirred with sophisticated software.

In recent days, federal law enforcement officials have
spoken ambitiously and often about their plans to remake
the F.B.I. as a domestic counterterrorism agency. But the
spy story has been unfolding, quietly and sometimes
haltingly, for more than a year now, since the attacks on
the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Some people in law enforcement remain unconvinced that all
these new tools are needed, and some experts are skeptical
that high-tech data mining will bring much of value to
light. 

Still, civil libertarians increasingly worry about how law
enforcement might wield its new powers. They say the nation
is putting at risk the very thing it is fighting for: the
personal freedoms and rights embodied in the Constitution.
Moreover, they say, authorities with powerful technology
will inevitably blunder, as became evident in October when
an audit revealed that the Navy had lost nearly two dozen
computers authorized to process classified information.

What perhaps angers the privacy advocates most is that so
much of this revolution in police work is taking place in
secret, said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, which represented Reef Seekers.

"If we are going to decide as a country that because of our
worry about terrorism that we are willing to give up our
basic privacy, we need an open and full debate on whether
we want to make such a fundamental change," Ms. Cohn said.

But some intelligence experts say that in a changed world,
the game is already up for those who would value civil
liberties over the war on terrorism. "It's the end of a
nice, comfortable set of assumptions that allowed us to
keep ourselves protected from some kinds of intrusions,"
said Stewart A. Baker, the National Security Agency's
general counsel under President Bill Clinton.

<snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/10/national/10PRIV.html?ex=1040515803&ei=1&en
=3fb3d838d462c41a

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