U.S. Backs Florida's New Counterterrorism Database

[Gyuri]

U.S. Backs Florida's New Counterterrorism Database (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21872-2003Aug5?language=printer) from Washington Post.
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U.S. Backs Florida's New Counterterrorism Database
'Matrix' Offers Law Agencies Faster Access to Americans' Personal Records
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 6, 2003; Page A01

Police in Florida are creating a counterterrorism database designed to give law enforcement agencies around the country a powerful new tool to analyze billions of records about both criminals and ordinary Americans.

Organizers said the system, dubbed Matrix, enables investigators to find patterns and links among people and events faster than ever before, combining police records with commercially available collections of personal information about most American adults. It would let authorities, for instance, instantly find the name and address of every brown-haired owner of a red Ford pickup truck in a 20-mile radius of a suspicious event.

The state-level program, aided by federal funding, is poised to expand across the nation at a time when Congress has been sharply critical of similar data-driven systems on the federal level, such as a Pentagon plan for global surveillance and an air-passenger-screening system.

The Florida system is another example of the ongoing post-Sept. 11 debate about the proper balance between national security and individual privacy. Yesterday the District and the Department of Homeland Security announced plans to launch a pilot law enforcement data-sharing network that will include Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York.

Paul S. Cameron, president of Seisint Inc., the Boca Raton, Fla., company that developed the Matrix system and donated it to the state, said: "It is exactly how law enforcement worked yesterday, except it's extraordinarily faster. In this age of risks that appear immediately, you have to be able to respond immediately."

Some civil liberties groups fear Matrix will dramatically lower the threshold for government snooping because other systems don't allow searches of criminal and commercial records with such ease or speed.

"It's going to make fishing expeditions so much more convenient," said Ari Schwartz, associate director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit that monitors privacy issues. "There's going to be a push to use it for many different kinds of purposes."

The Justice Department has provided $4 million to expand the Matrix program nationally and will provide the computer network for information sharing among the states, according to documents and interviews. The Department of Homeland Security has pledged $8 million, state officials said.

At least 135 police agencies in the state have signed up for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement database service, which began operation more than a year ago. At least a dozen states -- including Pennsylvania, New York and Michigan -- said they want to add their records.

In some ways, Matrix resembles other data-driven counterterrorism initiatives started since the 2001 attacks. The Pentagon's controversial Terrorism Information Awareness program also sought to use personal data in new ways, but on a far larger scale. The idea, started by retired admiral John Poindexter, was to create a global data-surveillance system that might find subtle signs of imminent threats. Lawmakers sharply limited the program's funding several months ago, and now some intend to shut it down.

A Justice Department document from early this year describes Matrix as an effort "to increase and enhance the exchange of sensitive terrorism and other criminal activity information between local, state and federal law enforcement agencies." Matrix organizers met several times with Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), while he was head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to discuss the system's development.

Matrix is short for Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange. The name was chosen somewhat whimsically by a Florida law enforcement officer, an agency official said. Florida officials say the system will be used only by authorized investigators under tight supervision. They said it includes information that has always been available to investigators but brings it together and enables police to access it with extraordinary speed.

Technical challenges include ensuring that data are accurate and that the system can be updated frequently.

"The power of this technology -- to take seemingly isolated bits of data and tie them together to get a clear picture in seconds -- is vital to strengthening our domestic security," said James "Tim" Moore, who was commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement until last month.

A senior official overseeing the project acknowledged it could be intrusive and pledged to use it with restraint. "It's scary. It could be abused. I mean, I can call up everything about you, your pictures and pictures of your neighbors," said Phil Ramer, special agent in charge of statewide intelligence. "Our biggest problem now is everybody who hears about it wants it."

The Matrix project began soon after the 2001 attacks. Seisint founder Hank Asher, a wealthy data entrepreneur, called Florida police and claimed he could pinpoint the hijackers and others who might pose a risk of terrorist activity. "Asher says, 'I'll develop this for free,' " Ramer said.

Working without a contract or pay, Asher set about creating the system in Florida, Ramer said. "We showed it to the other states, and the other states went nuts." They came up with an idea of a search engine called "Who" that would be at the core of the "concept as a national intelligence project," he said.

Ramer added that he's never seen so powerful a system in his many years in law enforcement. To replicate it "we'd have to go to 10,000 systems," he said. "It would just take you forever."

In 1999, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI suspended information service contracts with an earlier Asher-run company because of concerns about his past, according to law enforcement sources. The Chicago Tribune reported in 1987 that court documents in a federal drug case said defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey, who identified Asher as a pilot and onetime smuggler, offered him as an informant.

Jennie Khoen, a spokeswoman for the Florida department, said yesterday that the agency knew about Asher's "history with drug smuggling," including his work as an informant. Moore said his department "knew about Mr. Asher's past."

"We were aware of his informant activity," Moore said. "But we were also aware he had never been arrested or charged."

Because of the renewed questions about his past and because the state is entering into a contract for the Matrix services, Khoen said "it is prudent and responsible for us to do a comprehensive review of his background."

The Florida legislature just allocated $1.6 million to begin paying Seisint for its work.

Asher didn't respond to several requests for interviews.

Seisint's Cameron said people should focus on the value of the technology for fighting terrorism and crime. He said privacy fears are overblown because Matrix relies on the same records that police have always had access to.

Asher has also donated services to the FBI, the Secret Service and other agencies. And authorities credit Seisint with helping to turn up links among the hijackers who slammed planes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, and to some of their associates.

The Secret Service, the FBI, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service gave Asher letters of commendation last year. They are prominently displayed as awards on Seisint's Web site. Spokesmen at the FBI and the Secret Service said the letters are routinely given as thank-you notes to hotels and other companies that help their agencies.

Former Secret Service head Brian Stafford recently went to work as a senior executive at Seisint

[sidecross]

Those of us who lived through the Vietnam War resistance and the Watergate scandal will find this very chilling news indeed.

The antiwar effort would be fought by the government as a terrorist and antigovernment struggle, and the need for a Watergate break in would never be needed with these technologies.

[dragonfly]

Originally posted by sidecross:
The antiwar effort would be fought by the government as a terrorist and antigovernment struggle...Anti-war and other activists already are being treated like terrorists. Check this out:

Chicago Tribune
August 6, 2003
HEADLINE: Lists? What lists? Who gets on those airport no-fly lists, and why?
BYLINE: Carol Marin. Carol Marin is a Chicago journalist and former CBS correspondent.
BODY:

Sister Virgine Lawringer is a 75-year-old nun who travels a lot.

A Roman Catholic of the Dominican order for more than 50 years, she is what some might call a peacenik. She has devoted her life to non-violence, peace and justice issues. She is against the United States funding the military in Colombia, for instance. She was and still is against our war with Iraq.

Last spring, she and a group of people, some of them high school and college students, were on their way from Milwaukee to Washington. They had, among other things, an appointment with the Wisconsin congressional delegation to discuss human rights issues.

Sister Virgine says, "We went to get our boarding passes and the clerk at the ticket counter said, 'Just a minute, I have to call a supervisor.' Then the Milwaukee sheriff's police arrived."

She was one of 20 in her party who were questioned and detained. Some, she says, were told they were on "a list."

What list? Good question.

Held for hours, Sister Virgine and the others lost a day's worth of work in Washington, but ultimately were allowed to board another plane.

What happened?

Another good question.

Over the last year more and more "activists" are asking--and not just left-leaning peace protesters. Right-leaning folks like the Eagle Forum, Phyllis Schlafly's organization have, according to Salon.com, also "been delayed at security checkpoints for so long they missed their flights."

When these kinds of reports began rolling in more than a year ago, the Transportation Security Administration, created after Sept. 11, 2001, to oversee security at the nation's airports, initially denied the existence of any checklist with specific names.

The agency now acknowledges there is in fact a "no-fly list"-- that is, a list of individuals who were deemed a threat to civil aviation or posed a terrorist threat.

Which takes us back to Sister Virgine.

Could she have been deemed a threat to civil aviation or worse, seen as a terrorist threat? "Well, I was arrested once for a sit-in in the 1980s protesting the Iran-Contra affair and U.S. covert operations," she said. Was it violent? "No, and the charges were dismissed."

So if Sister Virgine indeed was ever on a list, what of kind list could it have been?

Are there other lists?

Another good question.

This April the American Civil Liberties Union in Northern California filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court on behalf of two other activists who were detained, questioned, and whose boarding passes were tagged for further searches. The ACLU sued the FBI and TSA under the Freedom of Information Act asking what kind of lists it maintained and what criteria were used in gathering the information on individuals.

"Although the FBI originally stated that it possessed no records responsive to the FOIA/Privacy Act requests," said the ACLU, "after the lawsuit was filed, the FBI informed (us) that it has now located potentially responsive documents. However the FBI has yet to disclose any documents."

The heavily redacted documents the Transportation Security Administration did provide, according to the ACLU, show there are in fact two lists. One of them is the "no-fly" list. The other is something called the "Selectee List."

The "Selectee List" offers names of passengers who are "subject to additional screening."

Could activity in a peace group or protest movement land someone on a list?

"Absolutely not" says Chris Rhatigan, a TSA spokeswoman. "TSA does not maintain an additional list of peace activists."

Is there, in fact, a second or "Selectee List?"

The TSA is absolutely loath to say so.

Rather Rhatigan insists it is the airlines that hold and control their own flagging system or list by which they check and double-check passengers.

Where do the airlines get their information then? Does any of it come from the CIA, NSA, FBI or other intelligence gathering agencies? And, if so, how does it make sure the information is good?

"We can't tell you that" says Rhatigan "but all information is rigorously checked."

Everyone wants safe airports, safe airplanes, crack security and the defeat of terrorism. But a lot of us, count me as one of them, want some government accountability. We want some public discussion of what kind of lists from what kind of databases are currently describing you and me and detailing the particulars of our lives and habits in the name of "intelligence."

It's crucial that we be able to talk about this.

Information issues, privacy issues, constitutional rights cannot be the casualty of the way we wage this war on terrorism. Then the terrorists really do win.

And it's the double-talk that's driving conservatives and liberals into each other's arms these days. When a conservative Republican like former Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia and the ACLU start holding hands on these issues (and they are), it can't be dismissed as petty partisanship.

Nor is it a rush to judgment.

Sister Virgine doesn't know why she was detained last year. "It could have been a mistake, those things happen, I could accept that. It just would help if someone would explain."

[sidecross]

Thanks for the post dragonfly. I am not surprised about what you posted.

[sidecross]

If this is what a 25 year old burglar can do, imagine what the U.S. government can do.

The Kinko's Caper: Burglary by Modem

August 7, 2003
By LISA NAPOLI

ON a steamy summer day, the 16-story apartment building on
Kissena Boulevard in Flushing, Queens, hardly looks like a
place where Secret Service agents would show up with a
search warrant, and later for an arrest. Women trudge from
the bustling markets just two blocks away, children and
bags in tow; elderly couples sun themselves on park
benches. Nothing about the quiet, neatly kept grounds
suggests a crime scene.

But when computers are the weapons and the victims are far
from sight, it is easy to operate quietly and, for a while
at least, undetected. And that is how, for almost two
years, Juju Jiang used an arsenal of computers in his
bedroom on the 14th floor - in an apartment he shared with
his mother - to break into others.

According to the federal agents who prosecuted him, Mr.
Jiang had unwitting help from his victims: customers at
Internet terminals at 13 Kinko's copy shops in Manhattan
entered personal information that he gathered with software
he had installed there to capture their every keystroke.

Mr. Jiang, 25, pleaded guilty last month to computer fraud
and software piracy. Had one target not heard his home
computer inexplicably come alive late one night last fall,
there is no telling how long Mr. Jiang might have gone on
with his scheme - and even then, he was not finished
trying. Agents say 450 people were ultimately victimized,
with Mr. Jiang breaking into a number of their bank
accounts, opening new ones with their data or selling that
data on the Internet.

Now Mr. Jiang, who immigrated from China at 16, sits in
custody awaiting sentencing, an audacious if ultimately
clumsy predator in the immeasurable world of cybercrime.
"It's one of those things that's so - for lack of a better
word - easy, and so prevalent," said Shannon Zeigler, a
spokesman for the Secret Service, which after 9/11 was
given an expanded role in investigating computer fraud.

The source and extent of Mr. Jiang's computer knowledge are
not clear. He was enrolled as an engineering major at Penn
State from 1996 to 1998. A doorman at his Queens building
said Mr. Jiang described himself as a consultant. In any
case, Mr. Zeigler said, "if you know how to maneuver a
computer, there are ways to kind of get into areas to do
things you probably shouldn't be doing."

That is putting it lightly, as the man identified in court
documents as Victim 1 knows only too well. In a telephone
interview with a reporter - the call was put through by the
Secret Service to shield the man's identity, which neither
they nor the victim would disclose - Victim 1 recounted how
he came to detect a cyberburglar in his home.

He had just finished watching the movie <object.title
class="Movie" idsrc="nyt_ttl"
value="108210;41846">"Rocky"</object.title> one night last
October. And as he was winding down with a little channel
surfing after midnight, he heard his laptop activate across
the room.

"I thought it was my antivirus software running, and I kind
of ignored it," he said.

After a few minutes, he realized that software does not
make the sort of noise he was hearing. Curious, he walked
over to the computer and watched as the mouse moved around
the screen, opening up files and searching, as if they were
dresser drawers that might harbor cash.

A few weeks earlier, Victim 1 had signed up for a
$179-a-year service called GoToMyPC, which gives users
remote access to their own computer desktops. Instantly, he
wondered if that might be the tool by which this ghost was
casing his hard drive.

Like a determined sleuth, Victim 1 resisted the urge to
stop the rogue cursor, and instead watched it move.

"I sat there as this person opened my CV, and some
documents in other files, and got my Social Security and
credit card numbers," he said. They were easy to get:
Victim 1 had them stored on a desktop organizing program.
Armed with the data, the phantom user dialed up a
bill-paying service called Neteller and opened an account
in Victim 1's name.

The virtual intruder's next stop was the Web site for
American Express. There, Victim 1 saw his credit card
information being entered on the screen.

And that, he said, is when he intervened, grabbing control
of the computer by touching the mouse and, in essence,
shooing the intruder away. "As soon as I did it, he
disappeared," Victim 1 said.

But the man known as Victim 1 did not drop the incident. He
called 24-hour customer support for GoToMyPC, a product of
ExpertCity of Santa Barbara, Calif.

"They didn't believe me when I first told them; they told
me it must be a mistake," said Victim 1, who called
customer support again in the morning and persisted: "They
asked where might I have exposed my user credentials." And
that is when he recalled a session at a copy shop on
Seventh Avenue in Manhattan just a few days earlier: "I had
a couple of hours to kill before my train, so I logged in
at a Kinko's. We figured out that was probably how the
person had figured out what my user name and password
were."

ExpertCity officials in turn contacted the federal
authorities, who, using logs of GoToMyPC use on Victim 1's
computer, traced the attacking computer by its Internet
protocol address, first to the company providing it
cable-modem service and then to a specific Queens address.
With ExpertCity's help, federal agents found that at least
nine other customer accounts had been used by the same
suspicious computer.

The agents obtained a search warrant and headed to the
building on Kissena Boulevard. Four desktops and a laptop
whirred in Mr. Jiang's bedroom, and, court documents said,
telltale signs of digital subterfuge were scattered about
the room: Post-it notes containing bank account numbers,
Kinko's credit card receipts, and books and manuals on
hacking.

"On the screen of one of the desktop computers, I observed
files with labels corresponding to the names of various
banks including HSBC, North Fork, Chase, Citibank and Wells
Fargo," a special agent for the Secret Service testified in
federal court in Manhattan in December. "I also observed a
file labeled GoToMyPC." The agent testified that the laptop
in Mr. Jiang's bedroom displayed a crime in the making: a
"brute-force attack" computer program that, if
uninterrupted, could have hacked into other computers.

Mr. Jiang confessed that he had been breaking and entering
for almost two years, the court documents said. A crucial
tool was a software program called Invisible KeyLogger
Stealth, which he admitted to surreptitiously installing at
the Kinko's terminals. (The product sells for about $100,
and is marketed largely to parents and employers who want
to monitor what gets done on home and workplace computers.)
Using the logging software, agents said, Mr. Jiang recorded
every character entered at the Kinko's computers, dialing
in later to retrieve the data.

But Mr. Jiang's arrest in December did not end his
exploits. After his release on bail that month, Kinko's
officials advised the federal agent in January that Mr.
Jiang had been recorded on security monitors making new
visits to Kinko's stores. The Kinko's security staff had
reconfigured the stores' 30-cents-a-minute public terminals
to register any use of key-logging software, and in
February further logging activity at one store was traced
to Mr. Jiang, according to court documents.

He was arrested again in March and pleaded guilty last
month to five counts of computer fraud and software piracy,
with maximum penalties totaling 17 years in prison and
hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. No sentencing
date has been set.

There have certainly been farther-reaching cybercrimes,
with deeper impact. But experts say the Jiang case is
especially disturbing because it illustrates the potential
damage that could be wrought by invisible spy tools.

"Any time you're intercepting communications from a person,
it's a very invasive act, and the amount of damage can
range from nothing or very light to very severe," said Ed
Stroz, who formed the Federal Bureau of Investigation's
computer crime squad in New York in 1996 and now leads a
private forensics firm. "What mitigates that is that most
people don't use Kinko's for the most serious stuff. I
don't think the top-flight investment bank is going there,
but I have known art dealers' having to use places like
that for an anticipated auction the next day. The kind of
content that can be intercepted in this way is serious."

Making the public aware of the vulnerability of shared
Internet access terminals is one thing. Remedying this
vulnerability is quite another.

"I don't know how you manage the risk," Mr. Stroz said.
"It's a little like managing the risk of catching cold. I
don't think you can eliminate risk; all you can do is
notify the user of the potential for it."

Officials at Kinko's and at the software makers whose
products were used by Mr. Jiang to execute his crimes were
quick to point out that his was an isolated case.

Maggie Thill, a spokeswoman for Kinko's, said the company
had updated its security measures for its stores' public
computers since his initial arrest. She declined to
elaborate on a statement she issued after Mr. Jiang's
second arrest, which said, "We believe we have succeeded in
making a similar attack extremely difficult in the future."

An updated user agreement warning customers who sign in at
the terminals about protecting their data has also been put
into use. "The hope is that customers will be encouraged to
guard the information in ways we've all become used to
guarding the credit card number on a charge slip," Ms.
Thill said. "The challenge is that technology the way it is
it has so many benefits no one can ensure 100 percent
security."

Leon Yan, managing director of Amecisco, the San Francisco
company that makes Invisible KeyLogger Stealth, said he was
distressed that his software has been used in the crime,
but he added that it was simply a tool.

"By nature, a tool like that can be used for good or bad
purposes," Mr. Yan said by e-mail. "A gun does not kill
people; only people do. Some people may want to ban all
guns, all CD recorders or all key-loggers. But they are the
same people who want to go back to the Stone Age."

For a maker of a product intended to be used while one is
away from one's home computer, the Kinko's incident is a
sensitive issue. Andreas von Blottnitz, chief executive of
ExpertCity, said: "Our system in itself is secure. The risk
we cannot control is the Kinko's risk. Users have to learn
there is potential risk in using the Internet from a public
terminal. I would not do online banking from a Kinko's
terminal."

Perhaps Mr. Jiang's case will make computer users more
cautious, Mr. von Blottnitz said.

For his part, Victim 1 said he has remained a customer of
GoToMyPC and is still an ardent technology user. "Computers
are a big part of my life, and I can't stop using them, and
I can't stop using the technology I need to use on a daily
basis," he said.

"I still use it. I'm just smarter about it."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/07/technology/circuits/07kink.html?ex=1061268737&ei=1&en=820dc86e0ded00f4