[MilCom] Talon Database

[baycomm at earthlink.net]

Boy this sure covers "MILCOM"

MJ Cleary wrote:

> 
> "...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.
> 
> 
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