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...
The Obama administration is seeking additional U.S. taxpayer
funds to provide more health services to Kenyans through a massive assistance
program that has already grown so “rapidly and exponentially” the U.S.
government now needs help from outside contractors to oversee it.
A Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm known for its work with the United Nations Development Program, the European Union and the World Bank has been hired by the administration to monitor, analyze and improve the foreign-assistance program, known as the Evaluation Services and Program Support endeavor.
The U.S. Agency for International Development has awarded a contract potentially worth $23 million to International Business & Technical Consultants, Inc., or IBTCI, which will provide such services when called upon.
The new arrangement allows USAID/Kenya’s Office of Population and Health Programs, or OPH, and USAID/East Africa’s Regional Health and HIV/AIDS Office, or RHH, to issue separate work orders to the consulting firm on an indefinite quantity, indefinite delivery basis.
The initiative emphasizes “Kenya is a priority country for The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and receives significant funding to address HIV/AIDS and related problems. Similarly, resources available from the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) assure continued funding for malaria programs.”
Despite this consistent flow of funding, Kenya wants more.
USAID says key target groups among the Kenyan population have reached plateaus or have seen declines in measurements of Kenyans’ health.
Kenya consequently intends to “seek additional funding to balance the current program to increase coverage for family planning, maternal, neonatal, and child health, nutrition/food security, and safe water and hygiene.”
USAID/East Africa similarly will enlist the consulting firm’s assistance in contributing to “the re-design of new, evidence-based follow-on projects and programs” in Burundi, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Rwanda, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
This agency unit likewise is working “in close collaboration” with U.S. government counterparts at the Centers for Disease Control and the departments of Defense and State “to accelerate the scale-up of proven high-impact and low-cost public health programming.”
Although USAID admittedly cannot adequately manage the voluminous initiatives it has launched in Kenya, cost-wise overall aid dropped from a high of $830 million in 2009 to $460 million in 2013.
Despite the administration’s emphasis on Kenyan health programs, there is another component to the initiative: the implementation of Kenya’s new constitution, which requires greater decentralization of the national government and expansion of the county governmental system.
While the overarching goal “is to focus on the establishment of a sustainable national health system for all Kenyans,” it also must maintain “strong linkages” to other governmental and societal sectors “that impact health but have conventionally been perceived as outside of the control of the health sector.”
U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor has reported over the past year on various components of Obama’s Kenyan assistance scheme.
Those exclusive Monitor reports (some which originally appeared via WND.com and were reprinted here by the author) led USAID to eliminate public access to a critical planning document governing a U.S. propaganda initiative known as the USAID/Kenya Strategic Communications Plan 2012-2013.
Publicly available documents revealing the Obama administration’s unwieldy portfolio of Kenyan projects – which includes a formal plan to manipulate Kenyan and global media – were removed from a federal contracting database, the Monitor discovered.
The agency likewise revamped one of its solicitations for industry proposals, modifying the project to make it an East African rather than a Kenyan-only endeavor.
However, the Monitor discovered the government merely repackaged and re-released it, expanding the potential geographic reach of the initiative while limiting it to health-related projects.
USAID also plans to spend up to $50 million to strengthen Kenya’s county governments, as the Monitor previously reported.
Though the effort could help redistribute political power across the African republic, whose national government is viewed as one of the most notoriously corrupt in the world, the administration acknowledged the process may inadvertently create 47 equally corrupt county systems.
The Monitor reported Obama also is embarking upon a nationwide reading project that aims to improve the skills of children in tens of thousands of Kenyan schools.
The administration furthermore launched new peace initiatives in and around Kenya, despite acknowledging that chronic cattle rustling and other cultural practices – such as killing rivals “to prove their manhood or impress young women” – might impede progress.
USAID separately will pump hundreds of millions into contractor coffers to help improve business for farmers in and around Kenya.
This article originally was published via WND.com, and has been reprinted by the author under agreement with WND.
Follow @tradeaidmonitor
My latest from WND. - S.P.
The Obama administration suddenly is hunting for contractors to help haul military equipment and supplies to and from Egypt and other nations within the U.S. Africa Command’s area of responsibility, WND has discovered.
The endeavor comes at a time of heightened tensions in the Mideast and North Africa, as U.S. warships already have arrived in the Mediterranean and warships from Syrian ally Russia reportedly are on the way.
Though it remains unclear which specific operations the initiative may support, the Army nonetheless is rapidly moving toward obtaining private-sector assistance in the AFRICOM Surface Distribution Services, or ASDS, endeavor.
The U.S. Senate has rejected an effort to crack down on U.S. taxpayer monies being forwarded to the violence-ridden nation of Egypt, and now the Obama administration is preparing to send more heavily armed, missile-equipped naval patrol ships to the interim government there.
For that purpose, Washington is hiring private contractors to make the transoceanic delivery on its behalf.
This shipment of Fast Missile Craft, or FMC, comes at a time when congressional interest in suspending U.S. military aid to Egypt had heated up – to the point there was a Senate proposal to cut it off. That aid, according to federal law, must be suspended in response to military coups.
But the White House refuses to designate the military overthrow of deposed President Mohamed Morsi as a coup, and therefore has expressed no more than a commitment to review U.S.-Egyptian aid.
The U.S. Senate last week shot down, 86-13, Sen. Rand Paul’s proposed amendment to the transportation spending bill that would have redirected “certain foreign assistance to the government of Egypt as a result of the July 3, 2013, military coup d’état.”
Paul specifically sought to shift some of those funds to critical domestic bridge projects.
The Senate’s rejection of the Paul amendment now leaves the administration and its congressional supporters relatively free to proceed with their plans, so long as funds are approved for the U.S. Military Sealift Command endeavor.
Procurement documents that WND located through routine database research show that the MSC is now arranging to outsource the delivery of two of the advanced naval craft, which the contractor will bring under its care somewhere “within 100 miles of Pensacola,” Fla.
According to a U.S. Navy description, “The primary mission of the FMC is to conduct independent and joint operations, primarily against armed surface adversaries” in and around “coastal waterways of the Red Sea, Mediterranean Sea and, in particular, the Suez Canal.”
FMC are equipped with a variety of missiles as well as a Close-In Weapon System, which can detect and attack incoming anti-ship missiles. Each vessel holds a crew of 40 personnel.
Other armaments aboard the Fast Missile Craft, an Ambassador IV-Class patrol ship built by VT Halter Marine in the United States, include eight RGM-84L Boeing Harpoon surface-to-surface missiles, (SSM) Block II missiles, one 76mm Super Rapid gun, one MK31 Raytheon Rolling Airframe Missile system with MK49 guided missile launching system and a guided missile round pack that can support 21 canister-mounted missiles. Also one Raytheon MK15 Mod 21 Phalanx Block 1B 20mm close-in weapon system and two deck-mounted 7.62mm M60 machine guns.
The Harpoon missiles can travel in excess of 67 miles with high subsonic speeds carrying nearly 500 pounds of explosives.
The beginnings of the FMC program precede the recent controversy over the military coup. Indeed, the George W. Bush administration in 2003 first reached out to contractors in search of someone capable of executing the then-conceptual aid initiative for Egypt.
The U.S. Navy since has awarded over $800 million in contracts to VT Halter Marine of Pascagoula, Miss., to carry out the Egypt FMC program. One already has been delivered, and the company in March 2010 had announced a $165 million contract to build a fourth FMC, slated for delivery by the end of 2013.
The new document explicitly reveals that “Egyptian military” personnel must be permitted to board and accompany the contractor vessels when the massive cargo containers embark from Florida en route to Alexandria, Egypt.
The inclusion of Egyptian military representatives, who will be unarmed, is “to maintain cargo integrity for the voyage,” the solicitation says.
Two cargo containers each 200 feet long with a combined hauling capability of 1,600 metric tons will deliver FMCs to Egypt. Each FMC must have a quarter-billion-dollar insurance policy, payable to the U.S. government in the event of a disaster.
An MSC spokesperson said the solicitation documents that WND discovered are exactly what the public affairs office possesses, and therefore it is unable to offer more information.
“We just fulfill the charter” for the requested contractor ships, she said.
However, when pressed to elaborate on the project’s explicit plan to have the Egyptian military board the contractor vessels for the entirety of the voyage, the spokesperson referred WND’s inquiry to the Department of Defense, specifically the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. James Gregory told WND he had nothing to add to the information in the procurement documents.
The Heavylift Cargo Transport initiative – Solicitation no. N00033-13-R-5218 – is sensitive enough to require advance screening of crew personnel by the El Paso Intelligence Center, or EPIC, a multi-agency tactical operational unit.
The U.S. Department of Justice created EPIC in the ’70s primarily to support U.S.-Mexico border and counternarcotics operations. The center has since expanded its mission in support of law enforcement and counterintelligence initiatives from the local- to international level.
EPIC will be tasked with approving – or disapproving – contractor shipping-crew members.
Although MSC set an August 15 contractor bid-submission deadline, the solicitation emphasized that “funds are not currently available for this procurement. In the event funds remain unavailable, this procurement will be canceled without an award being made.”
In other Egypt-specific U.S. funding matters:
1) A $10 billion aviation-support project at the U.S. Department of State continues work with contractors on how the government may divvy up these awards through the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, or INL.
Although Egypt is not the sole focus of this endeavor – which had been in the planning stages long before Morsi’s ouster – INL nonetheless has been eying Egypt as a possible target for counterdrug operations. Current INL-contractor aviation activities are taking place in Central Florida, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Guatemala, and Iraq, it says.
“However, it is anticipated that performance may extend into other worldwide locations and the contractor(s) must be able to quickly extend operations to new locations on short notice, for limited duration. Recent examples of such include Sudan, Honduras, Malta, Libya, and Egypt.”
2) The Naval Surface Warfare Center said it intends to award a no-bid sole-source contract to Unified Industries, Inc., or UII, to train the Egyptian Air Force, or EAF, in technical measurements and calibration.
UII will provide subject matter consultation to EAF Metrology Engineering and Calibration Center, which is planning to build a facility at the Cairo West Air Base in Cairo. The Navy did not disclose an estimated contract cost.
3) The U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, extended until August 15 the deadline for contractors to submit letters of interest in a project to improve the Egyptian university system.
As U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor recently reported, the USAID Higher Education Partnership Program hopes to bring together the government of Egypt, Egyptian institutions of higher learning and the private sector in a collaborative effort to meet the needs of this North African nation’s business community.
A similar version of this article was published via WND.com Aug. 3, 2013. Under agreement with WND, rights have reverted back to its author, Steve Peacock.
The U.S. Senate has rejected an effort to crack down on U.S. taxpayer monies being forwarded to the violence-ridden nation of Egypt, and now the Obama administration is preparing to send more heavily armed, missile-equipped naval patrol ships to the interim government there.
For that purpose, Washington is hiring private contractors to make the transoceanic delivery on its behalf.
Follow @tradeaidmonitor
Tom Woods and Pat Buchanan on War, Rand Paul, the Neocons and More
Bestselling author Tom Woods, filling in for Peter Schiff, talks to Pat Buchanan about Obama/Putin/Snowden, the state of the GOP, the Rand Paul and John McCain wings, neoconservatism, and Iran.