U.S.-China Surveillance

Studying how the U.S. government maintains records on its residents is not a simple matter of identifying “the dossier system” and following its history. According to the GAO, as of 2004, there were more than 122 data mining systems in over 50 government agencies and departments containing personally identifiable information on U.S. citizens. The names of individual systems change frequently, making it difficult for researchers to follow their development and evolution. Attempting to make sense of the overall system, how data from one system is produced and how it flows into other systems, requires familiarity with a dizzying array of acronyms and code names that have cast a patina of confusion over the system as a whole.

Even government officials responsible for administering these systems appear confused over terminology. During a 2006 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, senator Patrick Leahy asked FBI director Robert Mueller if his agency’s Investigative Data Warehouse (IDW) system linked to the Automated Targeting System (ATS) run by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The conversation has a bit of a who’s on first quality:

LEAHY: Does the IDW database share information or otherwise interface with the ATS data- mining program?
MUELLER: The ATS data-mining program? I’m not familiar with what you’re referring to, sir.
LEAHY: Just talking about the ATS.
MUELLER: You mean DHS?
LEAHY: The DHS — well, they call it ATS. I realize we’re using acronyms, but this is the one that checks on everybody crossing our borders. And you have the Department of Homeland Security’s automated targeting system.
Does your database interface with that? Does it share information with it?
MUELLER: I do not believe so. But, again, I would have to go back and check. I do not believe so.

The most comprehensive effort to date to map the overall “domestic intelligence” system of the U.S. is this map produced by the RAND corporation as part of its 2008 monograph, “Reorganizing U.S. Domestic Intelligence.”

RAND Map of US Domestic Intelligence (pdf)

For hardcore surveillance wonks, this map is a true treasure trove. The map identifies and shows key connections between federal departments and agencies and their data systems — extant, proposed and decommissioned — as well as private sector entities.

As useful as this map is, it’s not without its weaknesses. Perhaps most importantly, the map gives no sense of hierarchy, suggesting that all data systems are somehow equal. Some systems have a higher “document gravity,” meaning that records from other systems tend to flow into them. A perfect example of this would be the Investigative Data Warehouse (IDW) which the FBI has claimed will store “all data than can be legally stored together.” One could imagine a map layout in which those systems with the highest document gravity appeared at the bottom, while those with the least gravity and narrowest topical coverage appeared at the top. This of course, might make it difficult to keep systems clustered within their respective institutions, but it would help journalist watchdogs and activists focus on the most important systems. Another problem with the map is that, although it shows explicit data sharing paths between systems, it obscures their developmental relationships.

The DOD’s decommissioned Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON) reporting system, for example, is shown organizationally connected to the now defunct Counter-intelligence Field Activity (CIFA) and is linked as a data source for the also defunct Joint Protection Enterprise Network (JPEN) system (RAND’s map appears to have been produced before CIFA and JPEN were formally shut down, showing only TALON with an X through it). Although the precursor system to the DOD-wide standard TALON reports, the Air Force’s Eagle Eyes System, appears in the map, it is separated by six degrees, connected only via the DOD hub itself. A map that focused more on the evolution of the overall dossier system might show the Eagle Eyes system flowing into TALON/JPEN and then flowing into the FBI’s Guardian/eGuardian system, where DOD TALON reports are now filed. This case is particularly interesting because the basic threat reporting model adopted by the Department of Defense appears to have been transferred across institutional boundaries to the FBI. This is an excellent example of how former boundaries between record keeping systems and their parent institutions in the U.S. are disappearing, and how innovations within one agency can now more easily be adopted by other agencies due to a reduction in both policy and technological constraints.