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              | Date: 2003-09-11 
 
 TIA: Poindexter mault noch einmal Wie es die hartleibigsten Lemuren so an sich haben - selbst wenn sie gefeuert sind, eine Ruh ist deshalb nicht. Neben den Antlitzen von provinziellen Religionsfanatikern, Ideologen, heiligen Kriegern und anderen Lunatics in der gegenwärtigen Administration, zeigte eine große Nation mit John M. Poindexter der Welt ihr Arschgesicht.-.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.-
 
 postscrypt: Was diesen Figuren aus europäischer Sicht am meisten vorzuhalten ist: In Europa haben sie das Aufleben der dumpfesten Ressentiments und Pauschalurteile gegen die USA per se provoziert. Das *andere* Amerika - weltoffen, liberal, fremden/freundlich, individualistisch, freiheitsliebend -  wurde so ein zweitesmal gedemütigt, was so recht eigentlich zum Kotzen ist.
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 The New York Times, 10 September 2003
 Finding the Face of Terror in Data
 By JOHN M. POINDEXTER
 
 NNAPOLIS, Md. - The amount of data available to the federal government far
 exceeds the human capacity to analyze it. This has long been the case, but
 since 9/11 the need for better tools to help America fight the war against
 terror has become more urgent. Unfortunately, the Senate appears set to
 cancel financing for a promising and innovative set of technology programs
 that would help make America safe.
 
 In January 2002 the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is
 part of the Defense Department, established an Information Awareness Office
 to focus on technologies to help counter terrorism. We established a new
 research and development program, now called the Terrorism Information
 Awareness program, to test ways to find information faster, share
 information across agencies, aid in conducting analysis and enable better
 decision-making. The goal is to help the government "connect the dots" and
 prevent foreign terrorist attacks.
 
 These are exactly the tasks Congress has called upon the executive branch
 to perform. And in the past 20 months, we have made significant progress.
 In the last few months, however, several myths have arisen in the public
 debate surrounding not just the Information Awareness Office but Darpa
 itself. In order for Congress to consider the terrorism information program
 objectively, these myths need to be exposed.
 
 The most damaging myth concerns the role of Darpa, which has conducted
 high-risk, high-payoff research and development since its founding in 1958.
 Darpa builds tools; it does not use them. It develops technology and tests
 it; the technology either works or it doesn't.
 
 It is up to the government agencies and Congress, through the normal
 authorization and appropriations process, to decide whether the technology
 will be used and under what conditions. At this early stage, we don't know
 whether the technology will work. Agencies participating in the
 experiments, however, believe the technology shows great promise.
 
 In the research and development process Darpa routinely works with the
 Defense Department and the intelligence community (more than half of which
 is under the supervision of the Pentagon) to test its proposals. Since it
 is charged with fighting the war on terrorism abroad, the Defense
 Department uses foreign, not domestic, intelligence. It is far preferable
 to pre-empt terrorist threats overseas, before they reach the United States.
 
 The war on terrorism is being fought both at home and abroad, of course.
 Victory will come only with the active participation and cooperation of not
 only the military, but also the intelligence, counterintelligence and
 policy communities. The Terrorism Information Awareness vision involves all
 these groups. It is entirely appropriate for Darpa to be conducting this
 research.
 
 But it is a myth that the Information Awareness Office intends to develop
 some kind of system to spy on Americans. The terrorism information program
 is not and never has been intended for use in surveillance against
 Americans. The program's research is aimed at detecting foreign terrorist
 planning. The experiments have used only data from foreign sources, data
 that is legally available to all agencies that participated. There is no
 use of credit-card, banking or other data on United States citizens.
 
 Yet if the Terrorism Information Awareness program is not going to be used
 to conduct surveillance on Americans, critics ask, then why is it doing
 research on technologies to protect personal privacy? This is a fair question.
 
 In the longer term the data that the program is using today may not be
 sufficient to "connect the dots." Today most database searches are
 performed on a person who is a suspect in some kind of crime. One of the
 purposes of the program, however, is to identify possible terrorists before
 they act. We will often not know the identities of the terrorists. The only
 way to detect these terrorists is to look for patterns of activity that are
 based on observations from past terrorist attacks as well as estimates
 about how terrorists will adapt to our measures to avoid detection.
 
 More
 http://cryptome.org/tia-dots.htm
 
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 edited by Harkank
 published on: 2003-09-11
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