Are 95% of People Investigated Under New FBI Guidelines Innocent, but Entered into Database?

[midnight]

Under the new “assessment” authority, FBI agents can investigate anyone they choose, so long as they claim they are acting to prevent crime, protect national security, or collect foreign intelligence, with absolutely no requirement of a factual connection between their authorizing purpose and the conduct of the individuals they are investigating. FBI agents can start “assessments” without any supervisory approval, and without reporting to FBI headquarters or the Department of Justice. The Guidelines do not require the FBI to keep records regarding when “assessments” are opened or closed and “assessments” have no time limitation. The FBI can even start an “assessment” of you simply to determine if you would make a good FBI informant. Innocence no longer protects ordinary Americans from being subjected to a wide range of intrusive investigative techniques. The techniques include:

collecting information from online sources, including commercial databases.
recruiting and tasking informants to gather information about you.
using FBI agents to surreptitiously gather information from you or your friends and neighbors without revealing their true identity or true purpose for asking questions.
having FBI agents follow you day and night for as long as they want.


No wonder TPTB had to put such a milk toast man in Feingold's place.... Someone who wouldn't question what was going on? Feingold is a wise man with a law degree.... Ron Johnson is a tool for the chamber of commerce.....http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2011/03/26/are-95-of-people-investigated-under-new-guidelines-innocent-but-entered-into-database/

[msongs]

1. hey it's going to be the new gestapo or stasi or kgb. spy on everyone all the time nt

[midnight]

2. Plus they will have the largest storage of data in the world located

in Utah..

James Bamford has a superb review of the new book by Matthew Aid about the US National Security Agency (NSA) in the New York Review of Books this month. What seems to be causing a stir around the intelligence research (and computing) community is the reference to a report by the MITRE corporation into a the information needs of the NSA in relation to new central NSA data repository being constructed in the deserts of Utah. The report, which is being rather speculative, says that IF the trend for increasing numbers of sensors collecting all kinds of information continues, then the kind of storage capacity required would be in the range of yottabytes by 2015 – as CrunchGear blog points out: there are “a thousand gigabytes in a terabyte, a thousand terabytes in a petabyte, a thousand petabytes in an exabyte, a thousand exabytes in a zettabyte, and a thousand zettabytes in a yottabyte. In other words, a yottabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000GB.” However CrunchGear misses the ‘ifs’ in the report as some of the comments on the story point out. There is no doubt however, that the NSA will have some technical capabilities that are way beyond what the ordinary commercial market currently provides and it’s probably useless to speculate just how far beyond. Perhaps more important in any case, are the technologies and techniques required to sort such a huge amount of information into usable data and to create meaningful categories and profiles from it – that is where the cutting edge is. The size of storage units is not really even that interesting… The other interesting thing here is the hint of competition within US intelligence that never seems to stop: just a few months back, the FBI was revealed to have its Investigative Data Warehouse (IDW) plan. Data Warehouses or repositories seem to be the current fashion in intelligence: whilst the whole rest of the world moves more towards ‘cloud computing’ and more open systems, they collect it all and lock it down.http://ubisurv.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/the-biggest-database-in-the-world/

[glinda]

3. So are you saying that cloud allows them more gathering of info? That is how I think of it.

[Marblehead]

4. More laws broken

[Generic Other]

5. How many wives did the Zettabyte have?

I am sure the Mormons have it on record. That is a seriously bizarre paragraph you posted! Almost funny in an Orwellian sense!

[Sinistrous]

6. "...to sort such a huge amount of information into usable data...'

I believe one sorts, organizes, categorizes, and correlates DATA into INFORMATION.

A bit of fuzzy thinking on the part of Wordpress.

[old mark]

7. K&R-WOW! We'll all be more "secure" now!......

;(


mark

[upi402]

8. China's state cell phone co. is ordered to put GPS tracking in all phones

China says it's to ease traffic congestions.

Next?