Op-Ed Column: Homeland Security Hunts Down Negative Opinions

We know the Bush administration has yet to implement three of the most basic anti-terrorism measures: searching each container coming into our ports, sealing up our porous borders and screening all airline cargo.

So what is the Homeland Security Department busy doing with our tax dollars? Here's an unbelievable story from Wednesday's New York Times (buried, incidentally, on page A28):

A consortium of major universities, using Homeland Security Department money, is developing software that would let the government monitor negative opinions of the United States or its leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas.

Such a “sentiment analysis” is intended to identify potential threats to the nation, security officials said.

I suppose acting on the recommendations outlined by the 9/11 Commission (filed in its final report over two years ago) would be too easy.

Researchers at institutions including Cornell, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Utah intend to test the system on hundreds of articles published in 2001 and 2002 on topics like President Bush’s use of the term “axis of evil,” the handling of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, the debate over global warming and the coup attempt against President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

Do we really need to spend millions of dollars on this? Couldn't anyone with a modicum of geo-political perspective predict such reactions and simply confirm them by checking out some international papers online? And how about opening up a dialogue with people overseas instead of thought-policing them? They used to call it diplomacy. This system sounds like nothing more than an enemy-generating machine. A relic that might have been used during the cold war, but, as described, seems more likely today to stoke terrorism than it would be to thwart it.

The new software would allow much more rapid and comprehensive monitoring of the global news media, as the Homeland Security Department and, perhaps, intelligence agencies look “to identify common patterns from numerous sources of information which might be indicative of potential threats to the nation,” a statement by the department said.

It could take several years for such a monitoring system to be in place, said Joe Kielman, coordinator of the research effort. The monitoring would not extend to United States news, Mr. Kielman said.

Right. And we certainly have no precedence to believe it would. Like, say, Bush's warrantless domestic spying program, about which he first said in April 2004, "Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires - a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."

If it's one thing the Bush administration values it's the Constitution. Almost as much as they value the sanctity of life. Or irony.

So it's no shocker that others are wary of our government's intentions with this monitoring software.

Even the basic research has raised concern among journalism advocates and privacy groups, as well as representatives of the foreign news media.

“It is just creepy and Orwellian,” said Lucy Dalglish, a lawyer and former editor who is executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

How about this for creepy and Orwellian?

The researchers, using an grant provided by a research group once affiliated with the Central Intelligence Agency, have complied a database of hundreds of articles that it is being used to train a computer to recognize, rank and interpret statements.

...

The articles in the database include work from many American newspapers and news wire services, including The Miami Herald and The New York Times, as well as foreign sources like Agence France-Presse and The Dawn, a newspaper in Pakistan.

One article discusses how a rabid fox bit a grazing cow in Romania, hardly a threat to the United States. Another item, an editorial in response to Mr. Bush’s use in 2002 of “axis of evil” to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea, said: “The U.S. is the first nation to have developed nuclear weapons. Moreover, the U.S. is the first and only nation ever to deploy such weapons.”

The whole premise is right out of Dr. Strangelove. "Rabid fox bit a grazing cow in Romania"? Not a threat. Undeniably true statement about our creation and use of nuclear weapons? Threat. It sounds like something George C. Scott's General "Buck" Turgidson might claim. An inverted reality as absurd as Peter Sellers' President Merkin Muffley's admonishment: "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" Yet we're supposed to believe this software will be applied with the best of intentions.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, said the effort recalled the aborted 2002 push by a Defense Department agency to develop a tracking system called Total Information Awareness that was intended to detect terrorists by analyzing troves of information.

“That is really chilling,” Mr. Rotenberg said. “And it seems far afield from the mission of homeland security.”

Federal law prohibits the Homeland Security Department or other intelligence agencies from building such a database on American citizens, and no effort would be made to do that, a spokesman for the department, Christopher Kelly, said. But there would be no such restrictions on using foreign news media, Mr. Kelly said.

They promise not to build a database on us? Well, that should suffice. Until we find out they have. Isn't that the pattern of this administration (by which the mainstream media is seemingly duped each time): deny a program exists until it's exposed, then defend it no matter how unconstitutional and, if forced to follow the rule of law, just rewrite it.

There's a reason why this White House can still claim national security as a strength. The mainstream media, for whatever reason, has failed to focus on this administration's miserable anti-terrorism record. (Again, this Times article was banished to the inked Siberia of page A28.) While reports come out here and there, they are usually blips across the radar or one-day stories at most. Preventive measures? Pointing out incompetence beforehand? That doesn't interest them so much.

Unfortunately, this does more than give the Bush administration cover; it leaves us wide open. And not just to attack from terrorists, but from within, by an administration that has long ago declared a war on democracy, both at home and abroad.

Comments

[AMH2 Con]

Does Dear Leader and his jackboot followers have plans to jail the ney-sayers? How easy would it be to apply this kind of technology to domestic internet and news traffic?

They hate us for our freedoms....

[MediaBloodhound]

Hell of a lot easier than dozens of other crimes they've already committed.

[Pierre Tristam/Candide's Notebooks]

Great post, quite relevant in light of today's revelations (Nov. 2) from Pentagon's "rapid-response" initiative. I'm linking to this at my site.