[MilCom] Talon Database

[MJ Cleary]

"...a vast majority of the database contained reports of cars parked on the 
perimeter of military installations or "turnarounds" at base gates..."
"...Military police began to scour the Internet for indicators of suspicious 
activity..."

>From the wording above, I wonder how many plane spotters and radio hobbyists 
might have ended up in the database?
I know the file on Ken must be quite large by now. lol.


William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2007/07/an_end_to_domestic_spying_or_n_1.html#more

Trimming the Government's Talons -- Or Not
Ever since I revealed the existence of the Pentagon's Talon database and the 
military's collection of information on anti-war protests, the story has 
careened in all directions. The sinister interpretation is that the Defense 
Department was or is keeping any anti-military protesters under surveillance 
and suppressing the First Amendment rights of American citizens under the 
guise of counterterrorism. The American Civil Liberties Union has sued and 
Congress has demanded information and accountability.

Now comes a Defense Department Inspector General report on Talon (thanks to 
Steve Aftergood at FAS). Talon, as I suspected, got into trouble because of 
the unregulated machinations of overzealous military police, not because it 
was the product of some military conspiracy. Since the December 2005 
revelations in these pages and on NBC News, three prominent officials have 
been fired, the database has been scrubbed, and the program has been 
redirected. The Defense Department's decisive response, in fact, should 
serve as proof even for the skeptical that the military was caught unaware 
and took swift action to comply with the law.

Still, the problem hasn't completely gone away: The Defense Department still 
believes that protests can be a source of a true criminal threat or could 
serve as a cover for terrorism, and as such should be tracked. For now, the 
"force protection" officers have lost their mechanism to do so and the 
military police and intelligence have been reminded that they don't have the 
authority to collect information on U.S. "persons" or engage in domestic 
spying. I don't mean to be conspiratorial myself, but the response has been 
to think of more clandestine means to do the same tracking, and to rely more 
upon even more unregulated law enforcement agencies to do the dirty work.

On Dec. 13, 2005, NBC News aired a report, "Is the Pentagon spying on 
Americans?" based upon my research and the leak of a 10-month 2005-2006 
database tracking "suspicious" incidents of anti-military activity that 
might signal terrorist or criminal threats to military bases and personnel. 
In the database were references to reporting on a couple of hundred of 
anti-war protests and anti-recruiting incidents. The incidents were deemed 
to be a "threat" to the Defense Department if there was a concern that there 
might be violence, vandalism or some other law-breaking, even civil 
disobedience.

Talon had been established in 2001 as a way of tracking suspicious activity 
that might indicate targeting of military interests by terrorists. In May 
2003, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz directed all of the services 
to use the Talon format to track "non-validated domestic threat 
information." It was hoped that the Talon database of raw reports would 
connect the dots, possibly revealing terrorist action in domestic incidents. 
Protests were only a minor part of what was collected; a vast majority of 
the database contained reports of cars parked on the perimeter of military 
installations or "turnarounds" at base gates.

A sensible effort at passive analysis soon became a cause for more active 
monitoring. Military police began to scour the Internet for indicators of 
suspicious activity. Military police and military intelligence began to 
receive reports from local police and from federal law enforcement agencies 
of anti-war and anti-military protests. The database grew, but because the 
interpretation of what to collect and how aggressive to be was made at the 
base level (and the database itself shows that some officers at some bases 
were very aggressive), the collection was random and uneven. In fact, any 
sane person looking at the entire database in December 2005 would want to 
ask: What's the value of this information? Why closely track protestors in 
one place and ignore them in others?

The silliness of the effort, or at least its willy-nilly execution, provoked 
an immediate response inside the Defense Department.

U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), the homeland defense command, deleted all 
Talon reports from its databases in June 2006 and turned off the system. The 
Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), which had been made responsible 
for creating a larger database called Cornerstone that combined law 
enforcement and intelligence collection, immediately began to segregate and 
delete any reports older than 90 days that included information on U.S. 
"persons." New directives went out with clarifications regarding what could 
be collected and retained. The CIFA director and deputy director were 
removed from office, as was a senior Pentagon official supposedly 
responsible for overseeing the program.

On Feb. 2, 2006, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Steve Cambone 
directed CIFA to focus Cornerstone on counterintelligence tracking or 
foreign spies and terrorists. Any Talon reports retained, the memorandum 
stated, would henceforth be kept in intelligence channels subject to lawful 
retention rules. On March 30, 2006, Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon 
England ordered that the Talon system be used only to report possible 
international terrorist activity, not the activity of domestic protestors, 
and only retained as intelligence information.

In other words, military police at local bases were out of the domestic law 
enforcement business. Finally, in April, the new undersecretary of defense 
for intelligence, Ret. Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr., recommended to 
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates that the Talon program be terminated 
altogether due to "its image in the Congress and the media."

The Inspector General reviewed the Talon and Cornerstone databases and found 
no evidence of an unlawful intelligence collection operation. Of 13,000 
Talon reports, the IG found that CIFA had scrubbed 1,131 as improper; of 
those 263 were related to protests and demonstrations. Of those 263 Talon 
reports, 157 discussed an action or event that took place and 75 of those 
157 involved criminal actions that resulted in police intervention or 
arrests, involved destruction of property or violence, or required court 
appearances. The IG found that a total of 334 reports contained U.S. person 
information (regarding individuals, organizations, or businesses by name. A 
total of 142 U.S. persons were identified in 92 protest and demonstration 
Talon reports. According to the IG, "The U.S. person information included 
subjects; sources; witnesses; victims; interviewees; illegal aliens; famous 
people referenced for quotes, positions and scheduled appearances; law 
enforcement officials involved; and the agent creating the TALON."

The IG further determined that the Defense Department did not engage in 
either "overt or covert intelligence methods to obtain the information 
contained in the TALON reports." Information came in from "concerned 
individuals such as civilians; military personnel, both performing their 
official duties and as citizens; and law enforcement personnel." The Army's 
902nd Military Intelligence Group, headquartered at Ft. Meade, Maryland was 
found to be the main conduit for information coming in from these other law 
enforcement sources. This included particularly Immigration and Customs 
Enforcement (ICE) of the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal 
Protective Service.

Like most Inspector General Investigations, the Defense Department review of 
the Talon database was specific and narrow. The Talon program per se was not 
the subject of the investigation, nor were the actions of CIFA, Northern 
Command, or individual military bases and officers to collect or solicit 
information to track "threats," including protest activity.

So Talon is dead, and the Defense Department is contrite on any activities 
it might have conducted that violated its own regulations and inadvertently 
might have violated the law. But the Talon experience, military sources say, 
has just forced CIFA and NORTHCOM to go back to the drawing boards to figure 
out a way to keep an eye on domestic activity that could indeed be the 
source of terrorism.

And so the circle begins again. The danger now is that the dots, which 
Defense Department law enforcement still believes are valuable and should be 
connected, will be collected in some other way. The place for Congress and 
the ACLU to look is at the Department of Homeland Security, the new law 
enforcers with an unregulated and expansive mandate.