Many thanks to Drudge Report for spreading the word about my latest article “Feds want to track your DNA like a license plate.”
My discovery of this government plan to develop technology to track -- indeed, detect - individuals and groups based on DNA and other human "biosignatures" is a significant one.
Though this article deviates from U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor's typical topic focus, the potential implications on a global scale make it worthy of a link -- S.P.
Just as details are emerging about a controversial, nationwide vehicle-surveillance database, WND has learned the federal government is planning an even more invasive spy program using “physiological signatures” to track down individuals.
The goal of this research is to detect – as well as analyze and categorize – unique traits the government can exploit to “identify, locate and track specific individuals or groups of people.”
According to the program’s statement of objectives, “The scope of human-centered [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or ISR] research spans the complete range of human performance starting at the individual molecular, cellular, genomic level.”
The number of people identified by the Obama administration as potential terrorists surged in the past two years, and the FBI now is preparing for another spike as it plans to intensify its scrutiny of foreign visitors and U.S. citizens, U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor has discovered.
The federal government will hire up to 116 full-time private-contractor personnel to help amass and screen data on persons whose movements or activities are brought to the attention of the Terrorist Screening Center, an FBI-administered interagency unit.
The federal government, starting from the time Obama took office, in various ways has described returning veterans, conservatives, pro-lifers and those who support a constitutional government as potential terrorists.
And in just recent months, through the revelations of document-leaker Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency has been shown to be spying on virtually every telephone call made in America.
So TSC’s expansion comes at a time of rising skepticism about President Obama’s public pledge to reform the government’s surveillance and information-collection apparatus.
Such plans are specific to communications-intercept and data-gathering activities at the embattled NSA, still under fire in the wake of operational leaks by former contractor Snowden.
TSC lacks authority to independently collect personal data or communications. As a national repository, however, it receives personal information that local, state, federal and international entities submit about “known or suspected terrorists,” or KSTs.
The centralized Terrorist Watchlist – officially known as the Terrorist Screening Database – uses data from the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State, the Department of Justice and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
According to a project Statement of Work discovered via routine database research, the screen center is staffed by “officials from multiple agencies, including the FBI, DHS, DOS, Transportation and Security Administration, and the United States Customs and Border Protection.”
The FBI is recruiting contractors capable of working with those federal representatives, filling operations-support slots at the center’s Vienna, Va., facility.
Contractors likewise will fill positions at an unidentified “alternate site.”
Analysts and other personnel hired for this endeavor will assess the validity of data submitted or stored on people “associated with terrorism or terrorist activity,” federal documents show.
Part of the screening process includes removing persons from the list.
Indeed, the center “regularly conducts comprehensive and case-specific” data reviews, an FBI Safeguarding Civil Liberties web page states. Such reviews help ensure terrorist identity data is “thorough, accurate, and current,” and meets the federal government’s strict criteria for watch listing, it says.
The center also ensures that “complaints and misidentifications are addressed and any errors are corrected.”
The center’s Operations Branch, which manages center functions around the clock, comprises eight specific work units needing contractor services.
Recent and projected escalations of “encounter” activity necessitate the services, the government says.
The Terrorist Screening Operations Center is one such unit experiencing growth in KST “encounters.”
The unit serves as the “focal point for all domestic and international encounters” with potential terrorists. It provides 24-hour availability to partner screening-agencies, according to the contracting document.
“TSOC currently averages approximately 275 requests for service per day, which represents a 27 percent increase over FY2012 and a 70 percent increase over FY2011 levels,” documents show.
“TSOC anticipates encounter volume will continue to increase at a steady pace.”
Unit personnel assist other agencies via the TSDB, the U.S. government’s “sole consolidated watchlist for information used in terrorism screening.”
Following an operations center “positive encounter” with a person suspected of terrorist affiliation, the Terrorist Screening Operations Unit gets involved.
“When appropriate, TSOU creates and transfers operational assessments to FBI Field Offices for action,” the document says.
TSOU contributes to the database’s accuracy “by conducting research in several databases when a positive encounter is received.”
The Domestic Engagement unit is tasked with alerting the U.S. Intelligence Community and the U.S Law Enforcement Community to the availability of watch-list services.
Part of DE’s mission is to help intelligence and police agencies “utilize watchlist data and manage encounters with watchlisted persons.”
The Intelligence Unit “serves as the information sharing focal point for the TSC.”
IU analyzes and disseminates intelligence data that the Center collects. It assists both domestic and “foreign partners.”
Annually the unit disseminates “over 1,500 raw and finished intelligence products per year to support executive decision making and the USIC/LEC.”
The Terrorist Review & Examination Unit, or TREX, is tasked with “all watchlisting related matters for the FBI.” TREX also is responsible for the timely sharing of information on “FBI international and domestic terrorism investigations” among watch-listing partner agencies.
The Nominations and Data Integrity Unit, or NDIU, which adds and deletes data, averages about 8,700 record reviews weekly, with each initial review taking about seven minutes.
“NDIU anticipates an annual increase in workload volume averaging 10-15 percent per year,” according to the document.
The unit makes “thorough, accurate, and current additions, modifications, and deletions” to the TSDB.
It accomplishes the tasks through what it calls “biographical information validation,” “derogatory information assessment” and “biometric information identification linkage verification.” The document did not define the terms.
Another unit known as the Visa Review and International Liaison screens and identifies visa applicants against the watchlist. The office daily averages 400 service requests, “with an annual workload increase of 10 percent anticipated.”
Other than acknowledging its location “within the continental United States but outside the Northern Virginia or any other major metropolitan area,” little is offered about the “Alternate Site,” a unit that provides center “with the ability to conduct certain mission functions at a more remote location.”
The document also makes clear that contractor employees hired for center operations are forbidden from representing themselves in the capacity of performing “Inherently Governmental Functions.”
If such employees get in situations “where it may be assumed that he or she is an FBI employee, then the contract employee shall identify himself or herself as a contractor.”
The FBI did not disclose the estimated cost of a contract award.
A similar version of this article originally was published Jan. 20, 2014 via WND.com. Under agreement with the publisher, rights have reverted back to the author, Steve Peacock.
My latest from WND. -- S.P.
The number of people identified by the Obama administration as potential terrorists surged in the past two years, and the FBI now is preparing for another spike as it plans to intensify its scrutiny of foreign visitors and U.S. citizens, WND has discovered.
The federal government will hire up to 116 full-time private-contractor personnel to help amass and screen data on persons whose movements or activities are brought to the attention of the Terrorist Screening Center, an FBI-administered interagency unit...
Continued via WND.com...
My latest from Patriot Update -- S.P.
While the breadth of NSA’s communications-intercept program only recently came to light, a review of federal records and news reports shows that mainstream media largely ignored or overlooked a massive surveillance-system buildup that started to accelerate in 2006.
Indeed, hundreds of millions of dollars since have been poured into the very facility in Hawaii from which Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower who exposed the PRISM spying program, had removed classified documents while working as a government contractor.
Read more at PatriotUpdate.com...
EDITOR'S NOTE FROM U.S. TRADE & AID MONITOR: As alluded to in the Patriot Update article, The Peacock Report -- the Monitor's predecessor site -- in 2006 broke the original story on the NSA infrastructure-modernization plan (See: “NSA Seeks to Pour Hundreds of Millions Into Surveillance Infrastructure").
Even a full year after that breaking story, when some media finally began reporting on the project, The Peacock Report raised the question of why so-called news organizations were soft-pedaling the global surveillance issue (See: “Media Miss NSA Angle on Navy ‘Telecom’ Project in Hawaii”).
The U.S. Department of State is banking on Internet-trawling software to help it identify references to departmental activities in social media as well as traditional online-media sources. This week it renewed three 90-day site-licenses for the technology, awarding a $35,000 contract to Riva Solutions, Inc., to use Sysomos social media analytics technology.
Sysomos describes itself as a company that is:
redefining social media analytics with a powerful product suite that provides customers with the tools to measure, monitor, understand and engage with the social media landscape. Sysomos provides instant access to all social media conversations from blogs, social networks and micro-blogging services to forums, video sites and media sources.
The four "key steps of the Sysomos methodology," according to the company website, are:
State specifically is obtaining the rights to use Sysomos's "Media Analysis Platform," or MAP, product.
Source document: Solicitation #SAQMMA12Q0147.
FOR RELATED COVERAGE, PLEASE VISIT THE MONITOR'S STATE DEPT. PAGE.
ALSO CHECK OUT THE MONITOR'S INTELLIGENCE/SPYING PAGE AND THE PRIVACY/SURVEILLANCE PAGE.
Steve Peacock Interview with Talk-Show Host Peter Boyles
Today I was tracked down by Denver radio talk-show host Peter Boyles (710KNUS), who took note of my reporting primarily via WND on the issues of drones -- unmanned aerial systems -- and other forms of electronic surveillance. We spoke for nearly 20 minutes about some of the following articles, while Mr. Boyles also allowed me to briefly pitch my website U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor and talk about my background as a Capitol Hill reporter covering the final years of the Clinton Administration through the start of the George W. Bush Administration.
Many thanks to Mr. Boyles for this amazing opportunity. He expressed a strong desire to have me return as a guest on his show, to which I am very much looking forward. -- S.P.
Obama deploying drones around U.S. -- Contracts show units to be used to enforce regulations (WND; July 21, 2013)
Media Ignored Big Picture of NSA Surveillance, Focused on Jobs (Patriot Update; June 27, 2013
Drone training anyone? Army ramping up plans -- Subjects include 'search for targets, ' record details for analysis (WND; June 28, 2013)
Feds recruit private sector to expand drone use -- Seek traffic control experts to launch more spy planes over U.S. airspace (WND; July 8, 2012)