Government Executive - Authors - Sarah Lai Stirland

Report critical of administration’s info-sharing efforts

Sarah Lai Stirland — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 00:00:00 -0400

The report praised President Bush and Congress for understanding the need to better share critical information to prevent terrorism, but pressed the administration to reinvigorate efforts to break obstacles preventing law enforcers and intelligence authorities from collaborating effectively.

"Efforts to enhance information sharing have been bogged down by gaps in leadership, policy articulation, turf wars and struggles over competing -- and frequently incompatible -- technologies," wrote the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age. The chairs of the group are foundation President Zoe Baird and former Netscape Communications CEO Jim Barksdale, who is a partner with the Barksdale Group.

The taskforce is composed of technologists, former intelligence officials, members of think tanks and civil libertarians.

The 93-page report details suggestions on how data kept by intelligence and law enforcement agencies could be stored, labeled, managed, shared and audited to make information sharing between departments more efficient. It also suggests ways to make officials more accountable.

It argues that a clearer management approach would be to promote trust between various department officials. It also says policies need to be established to ensure officials feel that they can safely share the information without negative repercussions on their careers.

One of its big ideas is the idea of creating an "authorized use" standard to determine who can access lawfully-collected information. Civil libertarians are concerned that the government is amassing huge databases on people and mining the information without appropriate oversight.

The authorized use standard would require government officials to clearly outline a well-defined mission and would subject the officials to audits. These procedures would be coded into software, which the officials would use to manage their investigations and information-sharing activities. Human facilitators would arbitrate disputes between department officials that arise over refusals to share sensitive information.

"We felt that it was important to define another standard for the sharing of legally collected information because we felt that the standards that were being applied were not focused on the right basis for making a determination," Baird said an event to release the report.

"Simply because the information was collected inside the U.S. or outside the U.S., simply because it was information that was collected about a U.S. person, or about a non-U.S. person caused there to be a great deal of debate about where you could share it -- as opposed to being around whether it should be shared because it was extremely useful information," she added.

The goal is to strike a balance between providing the executive branch with a blank check to conduct anti-terrorism investigations and loosening restrictions that might impede officials' willingness to share information, she said.

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Senate panel sets deadline for NSA database deal

Sarah Lai Stirland — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 00:00:00 -0400

The committee ordered the NSA and the Defense Intelligence Agency to arrive at an agreement by the end of August to extend access to NSA's databases to more DIA analysts.

"If the [memorandum of agreement] is not finished by this deadline, the committee will seek stronger measures in conference with the House on the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal year 2007 to ensure timely completion," according to comments filed in a report with the committee's late May approval of the fiscal 2007 intelligence authorization bill.

Panel Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said in the report that the committee is concerned that the intelligence community is not sharing enough raw information throughout its branches. The idea behind sharing such unprocessed information is that various branches of the intelligence community may be looking for specific information relevant to their investigations, according to the committee report.

The agreement on terms of access to the NSA databases should serve as a model for the terms of access to NSA and DIA databases for the wider intelligence community, said the committee report.

To better enable information sharing, the committee has inserted a provision in the bill establishing a pilot program that would exempt the intelligence community from privacy law -- if the information is relevant to "a lawful and authorized" foreign intelligence or counterintelligence program.

Additionally, the nation's intelligence director would have to authorize such sharing. The Privacy Act is a 1974 law mandating that government departments tell citizens what information they are collecting about them. It also says the information can be used only for stated purposes. The law contains exemptions for law enforcement, but not for the intelligence community.

Privacy advocates have expressed concern about these and other recommendations made by the Senate intelligence committee's fiscal 2007 authorization bill because they have not been publicly debated. The Center for National Security Studies has asked Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., to hold public hearings on parts of the bill.

"The question is: What are the general rules here about the NSA sharing information about Americans' communications with other agencies?" said Kate Martin, director of the center. "That has been something that has been public in the past, and should be public now."

The provision exempting the intelligence community from the Privacy Act would allow the Defense Department to access FBI databases, Martin noted. Such access amounts to activity that current privacy law was meant to check, she said.

"What this is eliminating is one of the few existing legal protections against Total Information Awareness," she said, referring to a doomed Pentagon database citizen surveillance project that Congress nixed on a few years ago.

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VA data theft could provide push for info protection bill

Sarah Lai Stirland — Fri, 26 May 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas said Thursday he hopes "Senators [Bill] Frist and [Harry] Reid will take some time on the floor," in the near future to allow consideration of S. 1408, a data protection bill he co-sponsored with a bipartisan group of seven lawmakers. Pryor made the comment during a joint hearing hosted by the Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security committees on the recent data breach at the Veterans' Affairs Department.

A laptop containing personal information on more than 26 million veterans recently was stolen from the home of a department analyst.

The legislation would allow consumers to restrict access to their credit reports. The provision is designed to frustrate potential thieves from conducting transactions under other people's names. It also would require commercial entities and non-profit institutions to implement security measures, among other things. Four Republicans support the legislation.

A Senate aide who has worked on the bill said Thursday that "there has been increased activity and discussion in recent days towards getting a data breach bill passed due to the Veterans' Affairs Department breach." But he noted that momentum has been stalled for the past year due to a lack of action from the Senate Banking Committee. The committee needs to enact language on relevant areas that fall under its jurisdiction so that committee staffers can finalize and merge the various legislative proposals in their chamber.

"It's a priority for Chairman Richard Shelby to pass a bill that would cover the financial institutions covered by the FCRA and GLB," said Senate Banking spokesman Andrew Gray, referring to the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which address financial privacy issues.

Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, is working on the banking committee's legislative proposal. A call to his office was not returned Friday afternoon. Nor was an e-mail to an aide to Frist inquiring about scheduling time for a floor debate.

"I definitely think that the latest data breach is having a big impact on the Hill," said Susanna Montezemolo, a policy analyst at Consumers Union. "Just this week alone, there were three data security mark-ups in the House."

The House Energy and Commerce, Financial Services and Judiciary committees all approved separate proposals for data protection legislation this week. The consumer groups generally support the Energy and Commerce bill, while business interests support the Financial Services legislation.

Only the Financial Services legislation includes a provision that would allows consumers to restrict third-party access to their credit reports. But that bill would only permit them to do so after being victims of fraud.

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Wiretapping battle continues in Congress, courts

Sarah Lai Stirland — Mon, 22 May 2006 00:00:00 -0400

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday is scheduled to debate and approve a compromise version of legislation that is designed to establish an oversight process to the surveillance programs in question at the National Security Agency.

The latest draft has drawn fire from the American Civil Liberties Union. The group sent a letter to members of the Senate last week, urging them to oppose the measure.

"The bill is one of the worst bills I've seen on a lot of issues," said Lisa Graves, the ACLU's senior counsel for legislative strategy. "It basically gives away the store."

Graves noted that Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa. and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., struck the compromise. The bill would clarify that the president's decision to authorize warrantless wiretaps is not a crime and would remove many of the oversight procedures currently required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It also would require that legal challenges to the wiretapping program be heard by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review.

Similar House legislation has yet to be introduced, but another bill, H.R. 5371, would clarify that all foreign intelligence surveillance of Americans is subject to the oversight procedures in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The legislation also would authorize more money to help the foreign surveillance court approve warrants expeditiously.

John Conyers of Michigan and Jane Harman of California, the top Democrats on the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees, authored the measure.

In federal courts around the nation, meanwhile, the administration is busy fighting legal challenges to its wiretapping authority.

The Justice Department is scheduled to file responses to two lawsuits brought by civil-liberties groups in Michigan and New York on Friday. The two courts gave Justice more time to file after department attorneys requested it.

In a filing with a federal district court in New York last week, the attorneys said they were overwhelmed by the workload posed by several NSA-related lawsuits being filed around the country. The attorneys also said department heads must approve the proposed legal argument in the case. They plan to argue that the wiretapping involves military and state secrets and that the case should be dismissed.

That is the same argument Justice made to a federal court in San Francisco, where the Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched a class-action lawsuit against AT&T for allegedly giving the government consumer telephone records. Justice intervened and asked the court to dismiss the case because the facts involve a state secret that, if revealed, could jeopardize national security. Justice and EFF are scheduled to submit their arguments on that point sometime Monday.

Wired News published some of those documents Monday. It is unclear what impact their publication will have on the court proceedings.

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State department reverses itself on use of Chinese computers

Sarah Lai Stirland — Thu, 18 May 2006 00:00:00 -0400

"I was deeply troubled to learn that the new computers were purchased from a China-based company and that at least 900 of these computers were planned to be used as part of the classified network deployed in the United States and around the world in embassies and consulates," said Virginia Republican Frank Wolf, who chairs the panel that oversees State's budget.

Wolf decried China for efforts to spy on the United States, as well as its human rights record. He said State's plan to use the 900 computers as part of its classified network posed a security risk.

A State official told Wolf in a letter that its Bureau of Diplomatic Security is "recommending that the computers purchased last fall be utilized on unclassified systems only." The bureau will conduct other security inspections as well, the official wrote.

In late April, two commissioners from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission alerted Wolf about State's procurement of 16,000 computers from Lenovo, the Chinese company that completed a deal to buy IBM's personal-computer business last May. The acquisition makes Lenovo the third-largest PC manufacturer in the world.

The commissioners -- Larry Wortzel, a Republican, and Michael Wessel, a Democrat -- expressed concerns about State's plan to use the computers in a network linked to the Defense Department. They worried about espionage because the Chinese government has a stake in Lenovo, as it does in a majority of Chinese businesses.

"Even if these computers were put together in the United States, software, operating systems or hardware could still be modified," Wortzel said. "Therefore, we were very concerned that if Chinese intelligence could target the diplomatic communications of the State Department, it would do so."

Asked why the ownership issue mattered when the majority of the world's computers are made in China, the commissioners said Chinese intelligence officers would have been much more likely to bug the computers that they knew were going to be used to convey sensitive information on behalf of the U.S. government.

The government paid $13 million for the 16,000 computers, and they now will be used by State for unclassified purposes.

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Critics of IRS tax-return proposal urge changes

Sarah Lai Stirland — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0400

"The rule must clearly prohibit the sale or rental of tax-return information by a tax preparer to third parties," Intuit Chief Privacy Officer Barbara Lawler wrote. "This is a critical public policy principle that must be embodied by the final rule."

Lawler was one of several representatives from the public and private sectors who weighed in during an IRS hearing. The discussion centered on the IRS' December 2005 proposal to modernize rules governing tax preparers' use of their customers' annual tax filings. The IRS has said it needs to update the rules because they were enacted more than 30 years ago, predating electronic filing and the modern Internet.

The proposal has drawn fire from lawmakers, editorial writers at major newspapers, companies such as Intuit, consumer-protection groups and the National Association of Attorneys General. They charge that the rule would undermine consumers' confidential relationship with their tax preparers. They added that it would damage privacy rights.

The proposal would let tax preparers sell customer tax returns to unaffiliated third parties with customers' consent. The plan would update rules by covering electronic forms of consent. An IRS spokeswoman said the agency has no planned timeframe for enacting the changes.

The IRS said on its Web site that the new rule would "tighten existing requirements regarding the customer consent a return preparer must obtain" to disclose data.

But a Congressional Research Service analysis published last week found that the IRS' proposal would "permit broader disclosure." Among other things, the analysis said the new rule would not limit the selling or sharing of customer information to affiliated companies.

"Not every taxpayer might understand the real impact of providing their consent," Beth McConnell, director of Pennsylvania's Public Interest Research Group, said on Tuesday.

She noted that preparers could sell the information to unregulated entities such as data brokers like ChoicePoint.

"Taxpaying information is a window into your financial soul," she said. "Marketers would love access to this information. I don't think consumers should have to make a choice. The assumption should be the information should be private."

Other groups, such as the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, said in written comments that consumer groups' concerns are overblown.

Lawmakers in the House and the Senate have written letters expressing their concern to IRS Commissioner Mark Everson. They also have introduced legislation that would ban the selling or sharing of people's tax information.

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Travel group seeks details on airline screening

Sarah Lai Stirland — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0500

"What we're looking to do is to determine what the rules are for traveling without ID, what the penalties are, what the procedure is, [and] to make travelers aware of whether this is an option or not an option," said Jack Riepe, the communications director for the Association of Corporate Travel Executives. The group's members include representatives of the world's largest travel agencies and travel managers at large corporations.

Riepe said the group first learned of passenger traveling without government-issued IDs last week. An informal survey was conducted by the Identity Project, a two-man nonprofit funded by Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder and Internet millionaire John Gilmore.

The group was established to challenge identity-based security policies that it deems as questionably effective. More than 80 people completed the survey. Many of those who commented were cleared through TSA's process without government-issued IDs if they agreed to experience additional screening.

Gilmore previously mounted a legal challenge to TSA's identification rule. He charged that the requirement to present government-issued IDs violates his First Amendment right to meet and associate with others. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in January ruled against him. He is appealing the decision.

"This is going to come as a shock to quite a few people," Riepe said of the news about TSA's unspoken policy of allowing people to travel without government-issued IDs. "The fact is that a certain percentage of travelers do lose their ID or have it stolen while they're en route, and knowing that they could complete a trip with this option would certainly make a difference."

TSA spokeswoman Amy Kudwa reiterated that TSA's policy is to require that airline passengers show IDs when entering secure areas in airports but that the department is willing to make exceptions. She declined to directly answer why airline passengers are not explicitly made aware of TSA's policy for traveling without government-issued IDs.

"Customers in those unusual circumstances can undergo additional screening and go through the checkpoint," she said. "But the broad policy is that they have to have government-issued ID."

Responding to a Technology Daily story published last week, Gilmore told the Web's most popular Weblog Boing Boing that the group's gripe with TSA is that it is not forthright about the policy.

"We're complaining first that the TSA and the airlines are lying to the public about the real rule on ID," he wrote. "And second that they are not actually letting some people fly without ID even though the rule is that they can."

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Informal survey shows lax ID checks for air travelers

Sarah Lai Stirland — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0500

The TSA rule mandates that airline travelers present at least one form of such ID at security checkpoints.

Many of the travelers responding to the survey had forgotten their identification or it was stolen, or their driver's licenses had expired. Many of those who recounted their experiences at the airports said TSA screeners subjected them to extra security checks but allowed them to board the aircraft.

Other travelers were allowed to board planes after showing several forms of non-government identification, such as credit cards or school ID cards.

The survey was undertaken by a group of three activists calling themselves "The Identity Project." They are concerned about the inefficient and overly intrusive security policies implemented by the government. John Gilmore, a founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is a member.

Gilmore previously had mounted a legal challenge to TSA's identification rule. He charged that the requirement to present government-issued identification violates his First Amendment right to meet and associate with others. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in January ruled against Gilmore. Gilmore is appealing the decision.

The survey was completed by people who responded to the group's request for information about their experiences at airports when they had traveled without any forms of identification deemed valid by TSA.

"This was the first time someone has 'reverse-engineered' the process to find out what it takes to get on an airline without identification," said Bill Scannell, an activist who helped organize the survey and who is also Gilmore's publicist.

The group decided to conduct the survey after the circuit court decision, Scannell said. The judges told Gilmore that he could have subjected himself to a secondary screening process rather than present any identification when taking a flight.

But TSA has not made that choice clear to travelers, Scannell said. "This is a nation of laws. People should just be able to say: 'Give me the secondary,'" he said. "People shouldn't have to say: The dog ate my homework."

An agency spokeswoman confirmed that passengers can pass through its security systems without valid ID if they go through a secondary screening procedure.

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Homeland Security chief proposes screening of customer data

Sarah Lai Stirland — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0500

"One of the proposals that was floated and shot down before I got here was screening for protection," Secretary Michael Chertoff said in answering a question posed by a member of the department's privacy committee.

"Instead of the government retaining data, and collecting it, we would screen against the data, [using a] civilian name, pinging it against a private database and then having the private data holder who has it anyway say 'yea' or 'nay, 'red flag' or 'green flag.' ... That might be a model for some kind of data-retention issue."

Chertoff spoke at a meeting of the Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee, a group of government executives and private-sector volunteers who meet regularly to formulate Homeland Security's privacy policies. His was answering a question from committee member Jim Harper, the information policy studies director at the Cato Institute.

FBI Director Robert Mueller addressed the issue in January at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The Financial Times reported that Mueller said, "There can be standardized regulations and rules relating to data retention and secondly a mechanism for the swift exchange of information."

The European Union in December enacted a directive that requires all EU nations to require telecommunications companies to save certain call records and Internet logs for up to two years, and to make them available to law enforcers. The new law must be implemented within the next year-and-a-half.

Chertoff acknowledged that some might view his suggestion as "anti-privacy." But he argued that such proposals should be vetted more thoroughly for their trade-offs before they are dismissed.

"It's too easy to say something is pro-privacy or anti-privacy. ... Some of these are simply trade-offs on different elements of privacy," he said.

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Federal judge hints at BlackBerry ban, urges deal

Sarah Lai Stirland — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 00:00:00 -0500

"After all of the petitions, politics and lobbying, the essential truth" has not changed, District Judge James Spencer said at a court hearing here. The only question before the court, he said, is "what is the appropriate scope of injunctive relief?"

Spencer is overseeing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit between the Arlington, Va.-based patent-holding company NTP and the BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, which is based in Toronto. NTP first filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against RIM for violating several of its wireless e-mail patents in late 2001.

Spencer's statement referred to the frenzied, last-minute filings that both sides, as well as other large, brand-name companies, sent to the court this week to address a potential ban on using BlackBerries in the United States.

The media conglomerate Viacom and the corporate law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom on Thursday told the court that any injunction could be disastrous for them.

Meanwhile, NTP filed several documents designed to show that RIM had worked behind the scenes to unduly influence the Patent and Trademark Office and its parent body, the Commerce Department.

"I must say that I am surprised -- very surprised -- that you have left this decision to the court," Spencer said. "I've always thought this was a business decision."

He added that the two sides instead are going to be subjected to an imperfect legal decision -- one that neither side will like. "That's what you're going to get," he said. "The case should have been settled."

Spencer chided RIM for "ignoring" a 2002 jury decision in favor of NTP. The jury found that RIM knew NTP's patents existed but decided to infringe anyway. That finding increases monetary damages significantly, and damages were initially assessed at $23 million. The judge later issued an injunction against BlackBerry usage but froze it pending an appeal.

On Friday, NTP requested $126 million in damages, calculated from the now-significantly larger user base of BlackBerries. The company's attorneys also said the judge should issue an injunction against the existing commercial user base of several BlackBerry models.

RIM's attorneys said the case should be re-argued in light of an appeals court ruling, and the judge should reconsider the way damages are calculated. They also argued that an injunction would not be in the public interest.

Spencer said he would decide on the question of damages first but needs more time to think about the injunction. If he decides to issue one, he said, he will make sure government users of BlackBerries are not subject to the blackout.

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Government wants court hearing on BlackBerry usage

Sarah Lai Stirland — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 00:00:00 -0500

"The government requests that the court grant it leave to intervene ... for the limited purpose of appearing and being heard, taking discovery relating to implementation of any injunction, and participating in any evidentiary hearing relating to implementation of any injunction," a Feb. 16 filing with a Virginia federal district judge said.

The Justice Department filing is the latest salvo in the ongoing saga over whether Judge James Spencer will order the BlackBerry maker Research in Motion to stop distributing and supporting its ubiquitous communications device in the United States.

Under federal law, government users are exempt from injunctions in patent-infringement cases and instead can pay royalties. But the government is worried about the effectiveness of any technical solutions implemented to shield government BlackBerry users and its thousands of contractors from an injunction.

The administration wants Spencer to hold an additional hearing on the matter.

Robert McIntosh, an attorney for Justice, noted in the court filing that the plaintiff, patent holder NTP, had suggested several technical plans for government BlackBerry users. But Justice wants NTP to identify only one plan and for both NTP and RIM to agree to that plan in a hearing.

NTP should choose the plan and provide information and evidence to the government on how it would work, McIntosh said. Then the judge should schedule a hearing to resolve outstanding issues that might arise before he issues an injunction.

To exempt users from a service blackout, those government officials and contractors first must be identified. As outlined in the government's brief, there appear to be several methods of doing so, but the process of collecting the information involves significant legwork.

McIntosh said in the court filing that to save time, the government wants to ensure that any technical proposal will work and will be all-inclusive.

After talking to telecommunications carriers, the government determined that the carriers could not identify BlackBerry users, McIntosh wrote.

The government also needs to agree with NTP on which contractors to exempt from a blackout.

McIntosh noted that NTP does not want any more delays of the injunction against RIM. But many critical government departments, including Defense, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services depend on the devices, which justifies the additional hearing, McIntosh wrote.

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Bush makes new push for Patent Office to keep fees

Sarah Lai Stirland — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Once again this year, the administration proposed that PTO be able to keep the fees it collects from patent and trademark applications. Congress in fiscal 2004 approved a two-year increase and retention of PTO fees. In his fiscal 2007 budget proposal, President Bush said the provisions should be extended another year, and the administration plans to introduce legislation that would make the change permanent.

It has become standard practice in recent years for congressional appropriators to divert the revenues from patent and trademark applications toward government's general operations.

The House Judiciary Committee in November approved a bill that would end the practice permanently. The bill, H.R. 2791, is similar to one the House passed during the 108th Congress. The Senate failed to clear that measure, but Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., has sponsored a new bill, S. 1020, with the same goal but a different approach.

In budget documents released Monday, the administration said it anticipates that by fiscal 2007, it will take the PTO an average of two years and eight months to approve patent applications. That figure would exceed the two years and five months it took in fiscal 2005 and the expected two years and seven months in fiscal 2006.

The administration also anticipates that it will receive 444,014 patent applications in fiscal 2007, an increase from the 414,966 applications expected in fiscal 2006. The administration also projects that PTO will become more efficient at approving patents.

The fiscal 2007 budget projects that the office will spend $4,196 to approve each application. That number would be slightly less than the $4,279 in fiscal 2006.

The new budget aims to increase the efficiency of the patent process by further encouraging applicants to file electronically. The administration has granted the PTO director the ability "through regulation" to lower patent fees for such applicants.

The administration said PTO's budget in fiscal 2007 would go toward helping patent examiners with their workloads, implementing e-government initiatives and offering incentives to retain a "highly qualified and productive workforce," among other things.

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Lawmakers seek details on administration's spying

Sarah Lai Stirland — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., released a three-page letter with detailed questions to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the president's decision in 2002 to secretly authorize domestic wiretaps without warrants.

The letter includes many of the questions that constitutional scholars have been posing about the president's order, and several questions could put Gonzales in an awkward position.

Specter's Tuesday letter asked Gonzales why the president did not ask lawmakers to include the authority to conduct such surveillance as part of the USA PATRIOT Act. Congress passed the legislation shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, specifically to loosen legal standards governing terrorist investigations.

The letter also asks Gonzales to justify the administration's selective briefing of particular members of Congress, rather than of all of the members of the House and Senate Intelligence committees, as required by law.

At the same time, Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee demanded that Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., hold a business meeting so the committee can vote to investigate several aspects of the administration's domestic spying.

Under committee rules, Roberts is obligated to hold a meeting if at least five members formally ask for one. All seven Democrats on the panel signed the request to Roberts.

A majority vote is needed to move ahead with the investigation. Two Republicans on the committee, Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine, have asked Roberts for a hearing on the matter. Roberts has said nothing publicly about holding a hearing. A press call asking whether the senator plans for any hearings was not returned by press time.

Also on Wednesday, a group of Democrats, including Sens. Richard Durbin of Illinois and Charles Schumer of New York, sent a letter to President Bush asking him for specific changes in the law that he believes are necessary to permit effective surveillance of suspected terrorists.

When asked whether they were posing the questions so new provisions could be included in pending legislation to reauthorize the USA PATRIOT Act, a spokesman for Durbin replied: "No. that's because we believe that the president is breaking the law, and we would rather have him not do that."

The spokesman added, "If [Bush] feels that he doesn't have the tools he needs, he has an obligation under the Constitution to come to Congress."

In a speech delivered at National Security Agency headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., President Bush sounded defiant.

"I'll continue to reauthorize this program for so long as our country faces a continuing threat from al Qaeda and related groups," he said. "This enemy still wants to do harm to the American people. We cannot let the fact that we have not been attacked lull us into the illusion that the threats to our nation have disappeared."

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Attorney General addresses critics of warrantless wiretaps

Sarah Lai Stirland — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Addressing some of the most often repeated criticisms of the wiretapping activities, Gonzales said a foreign intelligence surveillance law that Congress enacted in 1978 was "not intended to be the last word on these critical issues."

"The legislative history of this provision makes it clear that Congress elected not to decide how surveillance might need to be conducted in the event of a particular armed conflict," he said.

Rather, he said, the authors of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act anticipated that Congress would have to revisit the issue again during future wars. He added that is exactly what they did when Congress enacted its resolution authorizing the president to use force against the plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Some Republicans, Democrats, law professors and the Congressional Research Service have said the president's secret 2002 order, which authorizes the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless domestic wiretaps, violate the 1978 law. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, on Friday introduced a resolution clarifying that Congress did not authorize the wiretaps when it enacted its 2001 resolution.

Gonzales further argued that the 1978 law's provision allowing investigators to conduct warrantless wiretapping for 72 hours in emergency situations is not sufficient for the administration's "detect and prevent" counterterrorism efforts. Those kinds of wiretaps still face a bureaucratic approval process involving many layers of authorization after they are approved, he said.

"Consistent with the wartime intelligence nature of this program, the optimal way to achieve the necessary speed and agility is to leave the decisions about particular intercepts to the judgment of professional intelligence officers, based on the best available intelligence information," he said. "They can make that call quickly. If, however, those same intelligence officers had to navigate through the FISA process for each of these intercepts, that would necessarily introduce a significant factor of delay, and there would be critical holes in our early warning system."

Gonzales further justified the administration's views on the president's authority to authorize the wiretaps by pointing to testimony from a Justice official under the Clinton administration.

That official said in 1994 "that the president has inherent authority under the Constitution to conduct foreign intelligence searches of the private homes of U.S. citizens in the United States without a warrant, and that such warrantless searches are permissible under the Fourth Amendment," Gonzales said.

Gonzales' speech, delivered at Georgetown Law School on Tuesday, was met with both protests and standing ovations from students. Some students stood in the auditorium with their backs facing the attorney general in silent protest.

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Supreme Court won’t intervene in BlackBerry dispute

Sarah Lai Stirland — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Canada-based Research In Motion had asked the justices to decide whether U.S. patent law could apply to devices operating partially outside of the United States. Part of the BlackBerry network operates outside of the United States, and messages are routed through this system -- even though the users on both ends of the messaging system are located inside the country.

The decision increases the pressure on BlackBerry-makers RIM to settle its long-running dispute with Arlington, Va.-based NTP Holdings, and could significantly increase the amount of money that RIM had previously agreed to pay, said one longtime observer.

"Basically, RIM has to figure out a way of either getting [U.S. District] Judge [James] Spencer to issue his injunction, and put it on stay pending Patent and Trademark Office developments, or they're going to have to settle," said Paul Devinsky, a partner at the law firm of McDermott, Will & Emery. "I'm sure the number now is more like a billion, it's no longer like $460 million."

NTP has asked a federal district court to block RIM's further marketing and support of the infringing components in the United States. If the judge agrees, private sector users of BlackBerrys could see their service go dark if RIM does not settle the case. This means that several million users -- both on Wall Street, and possibly in Congress -- could see their service shut down.

NTP has suggested that a court-ordered shutdown would not affect federal government users -- along with others whose use of the service is deemed essential -- if RIM created a "white list" of what has been estimated to be more than one million of the service's 4 million users.

But RIM has argued that any injunction would harm government and other users in critical sectors of the economy, and said in a court filing last week that it would be "extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible" to separate government and emergency users if NTP was successful in obtaining a court-ordered shutdown of service in the United States.

"Needless to say, the formidable logistical difficulties presented by having to identify and verify the continuing status of 'excluded or included' users from among the tens of thousands of government agencies, government contractors and subcontractors, and other companies and organizations that would be, or should be, exempt are prohibitive," the filing stated.

The Justice Department filed a brief with the court in mid-November asking for a delay in the event of a shutoff so that government workers' use of the devices would not be interrupted.

The two sides are now scheduled to submit further filings in early February, after which Judge Spencer of the Virginia Federal District Court will schedule a hearing to determine whether the court should issue an injunction.

RIM has said it is working on a software alternative to maintain BlackBerry service if necessary. RIM also has asked the PTO to re-examine the validity of the patents at issue. The office has already issued a preliminary ruling rejecting the validity of all of NTP's patents.

Early last year, the two companies had reached a tentative settlement of $450 million that RIM was scheduled to pay NTP to settle the case. But the deal fell through, and Spencer declined to enforce the terms of the settlement last November.

Spencer has also stated he intended to move swiftly to end the litigation between the two firms and not to delay any other pending decisions.

A RIM representative Monday remained optimistic on its chances of avoiding the settlement.

"RIM has consistently acknowledged that Supreme Court review is granted in only a small percentage of cases, and we were not banking on Supreme Court review," said Mark Guibert, RIM's vice president of corporate marketing in a statement. "The Patent Office continues its re-examinations with special dispatch, RIM's legal arguments for the District Court remain strong, and our software workaround designs remain a solid contingency."

Daniel Pulliam contributed to this report.

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FBI chief firm in defending anti-terrorism law

Sarah Lai Stirland — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Speaking at a breakfast, Mueller told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that pending legislation to renew the law includes provisions to better protect civil liberties than under the current law.

The chamber opposes the pending reauthorization bill. In an October 2005 letter addressed to members of Congress, the group instead endorsed the earlier Senate-passed version because it would require the FBI to meet more stringent legal standards when demanding customer records. That version also would not have subjected businesses to criminal sanctions for talking publicly about the receipt of such demands.

The PATRIOT Act legislation would provide several opportunities for challenging subpoenas "that [businesses] do not have in the current structure," Mueller said in response to a question posed by a member of the chamber. "The PATRIOT Act is essential for us to do our job and prevents terrorism attacks on the United States in a variety of ways."

But Lisa Graves, a senior counsel for legislative strategy at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the change Mueller cited would not be a substantive concession because Americans already possess a First Amendment right to challenge such demands. The ACLU is currently challenging the administration over the issue in court.

Rolf Lundberg, a senior vice president of congressional and public affairs at the chamber, asked Mueller several questions about the status of the FBI's enforcement of international anti-counterfeiting law, the agency's technology upgrade and the awarding of a related tech contract.

Lundberg also asked about Congress' inquiry into Able Danger, a data-mining project of the Defense Department that has been scrapped but that was the subject of a congressional inquiry last year because of privacy concerns.

Mueller did not provide details on that investigation or on the technology upgrade. However, he said the FBI has been successful in pursuing a case in which a Corning official tried to sell its trade secrets to a competitor in Taiwan.

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New documents may influence Patriot Act debate

Sarah Lai Stirland — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

The 2001 anti-terrorism law received a last-minute, five-week reprieve in December when Wisconsin Republican James Sensenbrenner, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, rebuffed a six-month extension that the Senate had approved. When the short-term extension was cleared, Sensenbrenner appeared adamant that the current form legislation to reauthorize 16 provisions of the law contains sufficient oversight to protect civil liberties.

President Bush signed the short-term extension into law Friday, so lawmakers now have about a month to negotiate their differences over the civil-liberties protections in the Patriot Act.

Those opposing the current long-term reauthorization bill could have more rhetorical ammunition by the end of the month, as documents from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit trickle out of FBI offices.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center early last year filed a FOIA request but received few documents until a federal district judge in November ordered the FBI to produce 1,500 pages of documents every 15 days until the requests are fulfilled. EPIC is scheduled to receive the latest batch of documents Wednesday.

The previous batch of documents, delivered shortly before Christmas, show that the FBI's office of general counsel had sent to the Intelligence Oversight Board several complaints about agents' snooping activities. The board is comprised of three members, is housed in the White House and reports to the president.

Some of the complaints relate to how agents tracked their targets. One complaint, for example, showed concern over the tracking of a suspect's telephone calls. The agent continued the tracking even after someone other than the suspect started using the phone, said Marcia Hofmann, director of EPIC's open government project.

Another document shows that an FBI agent received an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that allowed him to access addressing information on a suspect's e-mails, but he ultimately accessed more information in the e-mails than allowed by the court.

Hofmann said the documents show that Congress should take more time to more fully digest how the administration has used its Patriot Act powers because it is not clear how these incidents were handled.

"I think that the claim that there have been no abuses of the Patriot Act need to be examined in light of these documents," she said.

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Bush details plan for more effective information sharing

Sarah Lai Stirland — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Bush sent the details in the form of "guidelines" and "requirements" to the heads of government departments and agencies, and to lawmakers. The guidelines concern the role and scope of the authority of department chiefs. They also implement commonalities in technical standards and architectures to expedite the process of intra-government information sharing.

The changes aim to clarify how government officials should treat classified information as they share data. Additionally, the president's order would designate specific officials within government departments to handle information-sharing activities.

In a letter to Congress, Bush explained that the details are part of his effort to build the "information-sharing environment," or ISE, as required by a 2004 intelligence law.

"The ISE is intended to enable the federal government and our state, local, tribal and private-sector partners to share appropriate information relating to terrorists, their threats, plans, networks, supporters and capabilities while, at the same time, respecting the information privacy and other legal rights of all Americans," he wrote. "Creating the ISE is a difficult and complex task that will require a sustained effort and strong partnership with the Congress."

In April, Bush nominated former Energy Department Intelligence Director John Russack to expand the environment. Russack is a former CIA official and reports to John Negroponte, the national intelligence director. Russack held the first official meeting of the Information Sharing Council in November.

James Lewis, a Center for Strategic and International Studies' senior fellow, said the most critical elements of Monday's announcement concern the assignation of specific officials to handle information-sharing activities, the effort to build a common information architecture, and the revamped system for classifying information.

He noted that the changes still have to play out in the implementation process. In the past, the lack of clarity on how to effectively share sensitive terrorism-related information among federal and state authorities acted as major roadblocks in effective terrorist prevention, as noted by a key report issued by a commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Lewis said.

Many of the information-sharing provisions in the 2004 intelligence act came from a report issued by the Markle Foundation. Michael Vatis, a former high-level government official and former executive director of the foundation's task force on national security in the information age, called the ongoing establishment of the president's information-sharing initiative "vital."

"[The initiative] actually creates a framework for sharing information while also protecting some of the legitimate interests of the security of the information," he said. The plan creates procedures for sharing information, and it calls for the use of technologies to selectively share information across the government.

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Anti-terror law negotiators still show differences

Sarah Lai Stirland — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Group members reiterated many points they have espoused during the year. Kansas Republican Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, complained that the legislation would not adequately provide the Justice Department with the necessary tools to track terrorists.

"We live in a world where radical Islamic terrorists try day in and out to kill Americans and their allies," Roberts said during the meeting. "I am concerned that the U.S. Congress appears reluctant to give our intelligence committee the tools they need."

Roberts earlier this year sought to include in the USA PATRIOT Act reauthorization measure new language enabling the FBI to demand information from terrorism suspects by issuing administrative subpoenas. Those subpoenas do not require oversight from the judiciary. The House and Senate versions of the legislation approved rejected the idea.

Early in the negotiations, other conferees expressed support for the Senate version of the legislation, which contains more checks on government power and the FBI's investigatory abilities than the House version.

Although the meeting was billed by the House Judiciary Committee press office as the first of perhaps several meetings to hash out differences, some congressional aides expressed pessimism that many other substantive changes would be made in the next few days. They noted that some staffers struck a tentative deal to adopt the Senate version of the legislation.

Among other things, the Senate version would reinstate higher legal standards for FBI agents who want to secretly access library and business patrons' transactional records. The legislation would require a factual showing that the suspects have some connection to terrorism. Currently, agents only have to tell businesses and libraries that the records are relevant to an investigation.

The Senate version also would allow recipients of secret subpoenas known as national security letters to access lawyers and challenge the requests in court.

The House Judiciary Committee's top Democrat, John Conyers of Michigan, supports the Senate version, which does not include provisions on death penalties like the House version. He urged conference members to vote for the Senate version.

"History is rife with leaders reluctant to do the right thing and opted to do what is easy," he said. "I ask my colleagues to join me and do what is right, and make sure that civil liberties are protected once again."

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House panel votes to stop diversion of patent fees

Sarah Lai Stirland — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 00:00:00 -0500

The bill, H.R. 2791, is similar to one the House passed in the last Congress. The Senate failed to clear the measure but included language in fiscal 2005 legislation that temporarily suspended patent-fee diversion for two years. The current bill would end the practice permanently.

Despite repeated pleas for more money to help PTO cope with the higher volume and complexity of patent applications in recent years, Senate appropriators in a conference report last year expressed skepticism that the office really needs the money.

"Time is money," Texas Republican Lamar Smith, said Wednesday during the House Judiciary Committee discussion of the legislation. "If the Patent and Trademark Office can't get patents out in time, the inventors are the losers."

Smith, the chairman of Judiciary's Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property Subcommittee, noted that if the office does not receive a boost in funding, the time that PTO takes to approve patent applications could increase from about two years to as much as eight. Such a backlog could threaten the livelihood of entrepreneurs, he said.

He added that PTO's plan from a couple of years ago to streamline and improve the office's operations depends on ending fee diversion.

The bill, sponsored by Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., enjoys bipartisan support. During the committee hearing, Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., echoed Smith's comments. She noted that to date, more than $700 million has been diverted from PTO and called that diversion "a tax on innovation."

Lofgren said the bill would remove "incentives for appropriators to divert the fees" by directing PTO to refund patent applicants' fees if the money is not used to fund PTO projects.

The bill also would require the PTO director to study the effect of the office's fee structure on the ability of inventors to file applications. And it would specify that commercial contractors PTO hires for work toward approving patent applications be U.S. citizens and not have financial interests in the applications.

Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., also has sponsored a bill, S. 1020, to permanently end fee diversion. It would take a different approach by directing PTO to reduce its fees when revenues exceed the amount appropriated to the office for a given fiscal year.

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Group backs Senate renewal of anti-terrorism law

Sarah Lai Stirland — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 00:00:00 -0400

The USA PATRIOT Act was enacted shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Sixteen provisions of the law are set to expire by the end of this year. Both chambers have passed versions of reauthorization legislation, but they have significant differences. The Senate measure contains language that would implement stricter oversight over the FBI's terrorism surveillance and investigatory activities.

Documents recently made available to the public show that FBI lawyers have been investigating 13 cases of surveillance abuses. Those are cases where FBI agents allegedly spied on suspects without obtaining the proper permissions and oversight needed. The information emerged as a result of a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

The results of the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit undermine the Justice Department's argument throughout congressional hearings this year that lawmakers do not need to implement more mechanisms to oversee FBI surveillance. The department argues that there has been no evidence to prove that agents have abused their powers.

House and Senate negotiators had been scheduled to work on reconciling the different versions last week. But House leaders have delayed even naming conferees.

Staffers from both chambers have been gathering informally to discuss details of the bill. Justice's representatives have been attending those meetings.

"The only reason that they are in the meetings is not to negotiate but to answer questions about the use of law enforcement authority," said Terry Shawn, a spokesman for House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis.

But news of Justice's presence in the pre-conference meetings angered some coalition members. Michael Ostrolenk, the director of government affairs for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, said Justice's attendance is disturbing.

"We find that very, very disturbing, and members who took an oath vowing to observe the separation of powers should immediately call for the withdrawal of these [department] officials from the meetings," he said.

Justice officials could not be reached for comment Wednesday afternoon.

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Compromise cuts spending for airline screening system

Sarah Lai Stirland — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 00:00:00 -0400

The compromise bill to fund the Homeland Security Department in fiscal 2006 would provide $56.7 million for Secure Flight instead of the $65.9 million proposed by the House. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) oversees Secure Flight.

"TSA has failed to provide a fully justified cost estimate for this program ... or achieve initial operational capability with two airlines on August 19, 2005, as originally planned," appropriators wrote in their conference report. "At this time, TSA does not have a revised schedule and milestones. The conferees have reduced funding for Secure Flight accordingly."

The negotiators also directed the Government Accountability Office to keep monitoring TSA to make sure Secure Flight meets all 10 criteria appropriators set for it in fiscal 2005.

The current bill also includes a provision that would ban Secure Flight's use of commercial data. The American Civil Liberties Union praised the move.

"TSA must stop trying to circumvent legitimate concerns about the Secure Flight program, and Congress must continue to oversee the program to better protect the privacy of Americans," Timothy Sparapani, the ACLU's legislative counsel, said in a statement. "This program has failed time and time again, and it's time to let it die."

The negotiators further agreed to less funding than the House proposed for national security standards for driver's licenses. The bill would provide $40 million in grants to states to implement a 2005 law on immigration and driver's licenses; the House proposed $100 million.

The language in the bill would make $6 million of the money available immediately for test projects "in order that lessons learned and best practices might be made available to all states as quickly as possible."

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Homeland Security's privacy chief resigns

Sarah Lai Stirland — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 00:00:00 -0400

"It's been a long time coming," she said in an interview. "I've been in the administration since 2001, and I've seen and done a lot. I've built the office, and it's up and running."

O'Connor Kelly made the announcement at a sparsely attended Homeland Security Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee meeting at a resort hotel in Bellingham, Wash. One conference attendee reported that O'Connor Kelly said she had received an offer from the private sector that she could not refuse. She later told Technology Daily that the job is with General Electric.

Maureen Cooney will become the acting chief privacy officer as of Oct. 1. Cooney is currently the office's chief of staff and director of international privacy policy.

O'Connor Kelly became the chief privacy officer in mid-April 2003. During her tenure, she created a functional office that was supposed to ensure that all new department technologies and processes used for security purposes complied with the nation's many federal privacy laws. She was a high-profile figure who often spoke publicly about the role of her office.

Her tenure also was marked by several controversial incidents, some of which sparked criticism from privacy advocates and certain members of Congress. Though she and members of her office often have said they tried to consider privacy laws before designing new technologies and processes, parts of the department often came under fire for violating their own policies.

This year, for example, the pre-screening system for airline passengers run by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) violated its own policy of not using information about passengers collected by commercial data brokers. Four Alaskans are suing TSA because they want to know how the agency used the information collected about them.

Her announcement sparked mixed responses from privacy advocates.

Bill Scannell, a long-time privacy advocate and activist who is a spokesman for the Alaskans, said he had "great hopes" that her office would prevent anti-privacy initiatives planned by the department, "but I haven't seen that. I'm sure there were battles that were fought inside that we never heard about ... [but] her role has been pretty much reduced to flak absorption for [department] screw-ups, and TSA in particular."

Jim Harper, the Cato Institute's director of information policy studies, who serves on Homeland Security's privacy advisory committee, characterized O'Connor Kelly's tenure as "better than expected." He noted that she was not popular within the department after she issued a report criticizing it for secretly accepting passenger information from the airline JetBlue.

"At various times, she had serious fights with agency people," from which she emerged "seething with rage," he said.

The American Civil Liberties Union praised O'Connor Kelly in a statement but quickly added that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff should not use her departure as an opportunity to weaken the position. The group also urged Congress to pass a bill sponsored by Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., that would boost the powers of her replacement.

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Privacy, security experts urge delay of passenger screening system

Sarah Lai Stirland — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 00:00:00 -0400

The department's Transportation Security Administration has said it plans to conduct live tests at the end of the year of the next-generation airline passenger screening system known as Secure Flight.

The proposed system has come under fire both from privacy advocates and the Justice Department's inspector general, who released a critical report earlier this month.

The panel of nine security and privacy experts, which included Princeton University computer science professor Edward Felten and Bruce Schneier, founder of the Internet security firm Counterpane, said in the report that DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff should provide Congress with a signed, written statement on the goals of the project - goals that could only be changed on Chertoff's orders.

The department also should provide information on the technologies used in the Secure Flight program, how it works to achieve the stated goals, and what policies are in place to make sure that the stated goals are achieved. The panelists said they also want DHS to provide specifics on what information it collects about people, where the information comes from, how "it flows through the system," who has access to the information, and what the procedures are for its destruction.

"We believe live testing of Secure Flight should not commence until there has been adequate time to review, comment, and conduct a public debate on the additional documentation outlined above," said the report, a portion of which was obtained in advance by Technology Daily.

The report also provides recommendations on Secure Flight's future development in the areas of policy, regulatory and oversight structure, test uses of commercial data, the system's architecture, and the way it matches identities.

The report was discussed Thursday morning at a meeting convened by TSA's Aviation Security Advisory Committee (ASAC.) The committee is composed of aviation industry associations, consumer rights organizations and labor unions, which provide feedback on administration policies through written reports. The work of the panelists -- called the Secure Flight Working Group -- was conducted on behalf of ASAC at the request of the TSA last year.

ASAC members received the report last Monday, and were asked by TSA officials at the meeting to vote on sending the report back immediately for review at the DHS' privacy office.

While some of the members said they did not have a chance to review the information, the committee agreed to send the report back to the privacy office immediately. Committee member Paul Hudson, founder of the independent public interest group the Aviation Consumer Action Project, obtained permission to send written comments for the record within 15 days.

"I certainly don't support the actions recommended at the end of [the report]. They would essentially be turning over the combination of the safe ... to the terrorists," he said.

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DoD employees barred from testifying about terrorist data-mining effort

Sarah Lai Stirland — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Two individuals formerly involved in a Defense Department data-mining project known as Able Danger were barred from testifying. They are Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, a former intelligence operations officer, and government contractor John Smith.

Shaffer received a letter from the Defense Intelligence Agency on Monday instructing him not to testify. His lawyer, Mark Zaid, spoke for him before the committee. His security clearance also was revoked at that time, said Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., who also testified. Weldon was a catalyst for the hearing and is a champion of data-mining projects.

According to Shaffer's statements in press reports, Able Danger launched in 1999 to gather and analyzed publicly available information, as well as information bought from commercial data brokerages. Project members identified several of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers as potential terrorists before the attacks. But Defense Department lawyers prevented the intelligence unit from sharing the information with the FBI because they were concerned that the data-mining activity violated federal rules governing military intelligence activities on "U.S. persons."

The collective testimony of Wednesday's witnesses implied that federal privacy and civil-liberties regulations governing military intelligence operations may have been the reason that contractors were asked to destroy the information.

Erik Kleinsmith, the army's former chief of intelligence for its Land Information Warfare Activity unit, said Army Intelligence and Security Command General Counsel Tony Gentry told him to destroy the information. Kleinsmith said Gentry told him that under federal rules, any information collected by military intelligence operations that was doubtful must be destroyed within 90 days.

"Remember to delete the data -- or you'll go to jail," Kleinsmith recalled Gentry advising in a joking manner.

William Dugan, Defense's acting assistant to the secretary for intelligence oversight, said in written testimony, "If the intelligence component is unsure if the information they have obtained is proper for them to keep, the intelligence oversight rules allow them to temporarily retain the information for 90 days solely to determine whether it may be permanently retained."

When pressed by Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., on why the information was destroyed, Dugan said, "I assume because of the 90-day rule and because the information didn't fit into the 13 categories" of allowable information for permanent retention.

Zaid said the current line of inquiry should not focus on assigning blame, but should instead encourage law enforcers to monitor the individuals who Able Danger identified in order to prevent further terrorism attacks and to allow future projects to go ahead.

"This isn't a partisan issue," he said. "There's enough blame to go around."

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