For weeks, uncertainty about how the NSA surveillance system - PRISM - actually operates has fueled fierce debate about whether the Obama Administration has been fully candid in its representation of the Agency’s programs.

Release of a new set of slides appears to have answered many of these uncertainties. We can now say with far greater assurance how the NSA actually works and that the President and senior officials have made inaccurate statements.

These documents reveal a substantial amount of new information about PRISM processes and operations, including: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents/ And related article. http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html

SLIDE 1 – PRISM Tasking Process

• The PRISM database contains both CONTENT and METADATA.
• Content (voice messages) is indicated as PENDING STORED COMMS.
• The TARGETING REVIEW AND RELEASE process involves PROFILING.
• This partially automated PROFILING process employs both real-time SURVEILLANCE data and PENDING STORED COMMS in the decision to target an individual.
• The determination that a potential target is a US PERSON is made by the FBI after profiling has identified the subject.
• Profiling involves searches of databases of other Agencies, including foreign intel service databases
• A warrant is NOT used for this initial PROFILING step.
• The PROVIDERS (Google, Yahoo, etc.) provide additional data after targeting is completed (all targeting data provided stays in the database and informs subsequent profiling decisions.)
• NUCLEON analyses the Voice Content released from the PRISM database.
• PINWALE does the same for email content.

SLIDE 1 (original)



SLIDE 2

The next slide gives us further detail about the use of voice CONTENT in PRISM:

• Voice recognition and Internet are part of PRISM - it isn't just metadata!
• PRINTAURA automates the traffic flow. SCISSORS and Protocol Exploitation sort data types for analysis in NUCLEON (voice), PINWALE (video), MAINWAY (call records – phone metadata) and MARINA (Internet records).
• In addition to NUCLEON, there is a second voice data program named CONVEYANCE, which appears to be a splitter.
• This slide also shows voice CONTENT is being acquired as part of the same program.
• The claim that PRISM does not contain voice content, just metadata, is simply untrue.
• Voice Metadata goes to MARINA and Internet records are analyzed and stored in MAINWAY.

SLIDE 2 (original)




SLIDE 3: There are 10 Types of Content within PRISM


• The PRISM case notation format reflects the availability, confirmed by The Post's reporting, of real-time surveillance as well as stored content.
• SLIDE 3 shows there are 10 types of CONTENT stored within the PRISM database:





• NOTE A, SLIDE 3: Voice data appears to be designated “Content Type: STORED COMMS" (Except VoIP)

STORED COMMS is US person voice (and email) content. There is no other other type of content that US person voice content might fit into, and by a process of deduction, nothing else that STORED COMMS might be. Also, please note in Slides 1 and 2, PENDING STORED COMMS is shown to have its own separate process stream inside the PRISM database, and it is not SURVEILLANCE that may be acquired after the warrant is issued. This seems to answer two questions: whether content informs the targeting decision; and, is it gathered before or after a warrant is issued?

Clearly, as these and earlier documents show, the PRISM system and analysts have access to vast amounts of data at the profiling stage before the targeting decision is made, and as NSA interprets the law, this profiling step does not require a FISA warrant under the 2008 FISA Amendement Act (FAA). In addition to content taken from the 8 Internet Service Providers, the PRISM program also taps into fiber cables "upstream" (at international points of ingress/egress to the US and abroad), as shown in the "FAA 702 Operations" slide, June 8 Guardian slide below: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-prism-server-collection-facebook-google



Indeed, it is virtually certain that large amounts of US person data are available without warrants to NSA personnel, at least in the files of other agencies that analysts and contractors may access in the process of profiling suspected terrorists and other NSA targets. Under the law as it was changed by the PATRIOT Act, analysts have 72 hours to examine US person content before they have to seek a warrant. See FISA, 50 U.S.C. § 1801(h)(4): http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1801



Furthermore, NSA and its contractors have a full week to seek a FISA warrant under "exigent circumstances". 50 U.S.C. § 1805(e)(3): http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1805


PRISM is a “database of databases.” Analysts have access to many databases, both domestic and foreign intelligence agencies, and those contain information from all sources – and they generally are not minimized to segregate US person information. According to the sequence of steps shown in SLIDE 2, US person voice content does get separated out and sent to NUCLEON, and the metadata is deposited in MARINA, but only after a US person has gone through the profiling process. This suggests that US person content is utilized in some way at the initial profiling stage of PRISM, which appears to skirt the intent of FISA, if as we see below, loopholes allow it's use in practice.

Under the law, US person telco content is supposed to be "minimized" under Sec. 215 of the PATRIOT Act, and Sec. 216 is supposed to do the same for US person Internet records. Meanwhile Sec. 702 of the 2008 FAA (FISA Amendent Act) legalized the sort of targeted NSA activities that PRISM carries out, but that targeting is supposed to be restricted to foreign persons abroad. Nonetheless, because of loopholes in the law -- such as the allowance under Sec. 1801(h)(4) and 1805(e)(3) for up to seven days of unfettered viewing of US person data that has been worked into PRISM's Tasking process (profiling) -- it does not look like the FISA wall that is supposed to separate these two NSA programs provides any real separation.

• NOTE B, SLIDE 3: NSA intercepts email, on-line chats in real-time, CONTENT TYPES C,D

This appears to answer some of the issue of whether analysts can access communications in real-time, or whether they have to wait for a warrant. That question was raised by this report in CNET: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589495-38/nsa-spying-flap-extends-to-contents-of-u.s-phone-calls/


Bear in mind two things: the system seems to handle phone, internet, and email messages differently, and under FISA as revised by the PATRIOT ACT, NSA analysts and contractors have 72 hours to do what they want with all data before seeking a warrant. A warrant is only required if the decision is made to target the individual.


PRISM PROFILING estimate: 90 million callers each month.

SLIDE 4 shows that 117,000 persons were profiled as of April 5, 2013. That may not seem like a very large number. But, NSA analysts are also trained to look at all communications, “two hops” out from a targeted person. The implication of that is that the initial PROFILING step outlined in SLIDE 1 profiles very large numbers of persons, and thus has no real 4th Amendment protection for US persons profiled.

How can that be if the system segregates US person data and is court approved? Look at SLIDES 1 and 2, again. Keep in mind the flow chart that shows how PRISM works. Everyone who has been in communication with those 117,000 targets indicated in SLIDE 4 is also investigated, and (at another “hop”) everyone they have been talking to or emailing or texting or chatting on Internet boards. Because these numbers grow exponentially with each hop, that means that if those 117K persons targeted by PRISM called 30 people that month, and they in turn called 30, the PRISM analysts will have initiated investigations of some 90 million persons each month. That could be more than a billion people each year are profiled. Profiling on this vast scale is consistent with known NSA's statistics: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/27/nsa-online-metadata-collection


SLIDE 4



The PRISM profiling process contains virtually no safeguards, and here is why:

1) The PRISM Tasking Process flowchart describes an NSA profiling process that does not involve the FBI at any level until the very end, when the FBI ESCU determines the suspect is or is not a US person.
2) The first step in the PRISM process is conducted by software that searches a series of interlinked databases and assembles a predictive profile. The scoring on that profile determines the subject as a potential target. Bill Binney describes that profiling process here: http://civic.mit.edu/blog/schock/the-government-is-profiling-you-william-binney-former-nsa
3) Until the FBI determines that the subject is a US person, the subject is presumed to be a non-US person, and the profiling part of the system affords no 4th Amendment protections in the warrantless search of an array of databases, including those of other US and foreign intelligence services.
4) During this tasking (profiling) stage, the analyst also has access to a near real-time take of the subject's internet activities and chat. No warrant is required for the analyst to carry out this human component of the profiling process. That is described at greater length here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023134820
5) The analyst has 72 hours to search across NSA and outside agency databases, as well as real-time monitoring, from the time an anticulable suspicion is raised. During that investigation, supervision is minimal, and the analyst does not have to seek additional permission or a warrant. This initial profiling step is probably the unsupervised analyst's activities that Snowden was describing.



• The metadata focus is the shiny object. The issue is profiling, which does not involve probable cause.

The metadata focus is the shiny object. The issue these new slides raise is profiling – they illustrate how the system profiles suspected callers -- and, many, many more who are called, at least "two hops" out.

Profiling works this way: even though the content of phone and email messages is supposed to be segregated within the databank, the system relies upon algorithms that are built upon all sources of information -- including other US and foreign intel agencies -- to identify possible terrorists when a call is made, in real-time. Those other databases (CIA, FBI, MI6, Saudi MID) inform the NSA PRISM database, but they don't reliably separate (or minimize) US person from foreign person information, so the initial profiling step effectively has no 4th Amendment protections built into it at all. There is no warrant requirement for this step. The NSA reads the law so that it is free to hoover up all calls, email, and Internet traffic, regardless of the parties being within the US. The courts have interpreted that US persons have some expectation of privacy in the content of their voice and email, but considerably less in other Internet communications, so online communications are not protected, and NSA analysts can access them freely in "real-time" whenever you log on. Finally, the courts have little or nothing to say about government profiling of US persons (provided that it doesn't discriminate), so that is where the Agency operates most freely.

In other words, when you place a call, or go on-line to send a message, you're potentially profiled with an NSA "database of databases" that makes no distinctions between US and foreign persons until at a later stage, the software or an analyst determines the caller isn't a likely terrorist or a foreign person.

Obama’s Misleading Statement to Charlie Rose: “There is no content in that database”

Both parts – content and metadata - go through a single NSA database, and these slide show that. Do you want to know what Obama actually said?

Much of the President's credibility on this issue rides on the accuracy of his assertions made to Charlie Rose two weeks ago that NSA's "2015 program" keeps only phone call metadata and does not collect voice content. As he put it, the NSA doesn't listen to Americans phone calls because that data isn't kept. "There is no content. " But, is that true? The Post's revelation about NUCLEON certainly contributes to the doubts about that claim. It now appears that Obama was describing only one isolated part of the PRISM database, MARINA, where US person call metadata is stored. Now that we have the larger picture, that was very misleading of Mr. Obama. Very misleading.

The President's interview with Rose is excerpted at length, below: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023050432

Program 215, (the President) said gets data from the service providers like a Verizon in bulk, and basically call pairs.



We now see that the President's statement is, at the least, misleading, if not confused: "There is no content in that database."


What Has and Hasn't Changed Since the 2008 FISA Amendment

The pre-2008 FAA Terrorist Surveillance Program (The Program) swept up everything, content included, and assembled profiles of everybody. That's what Binney and Drake tell us, and they were certainly in a position to know. The EFF suits showed the same thing.

What happens now is that all that data has been harvested and resides in a number of gov't agency databases, and is compared to your metadata whenever you make a call or email. If you score high enough based upon the profile (algorithm), the system red flags you for a warrant. The system takes another look at you in the meantime, before FISC issues the warrant (the law gives NSA 72 hrs. to seek a warrant, and 7 days in "exigent circumstances", and the content gathered (which Binney says has been encrypted but not destroyed) spills out and gets added to the analyst's "book".

Now, someone needs to explain how, in effect, this sort of warrantless universal profiling is really any different from the warrantless targeted surveillance that was going on before?

Who could have foreseen that our fiends and allies in the region would turn on us this way?

http://forum.keypublishing.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=40247&stc=1&d=1093792289

Those who've been most avidly pursuing Snowden aren't the sharpest tacks around here. They still don't grasp the details. The big picture is totally lost on them.

Two days before President Obama's revealing interview with Charley Rose, the Washington Post published an overlooked article about the many programs run by NSA. Deep in the story was this revelation about a slew of surveillance operations: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-06-15/news/39993852_1_comey-national-intelligence-intelligence-collection


That would seem to directly contradict the President's comforting assurance Sunday night that NSA doesn't listen to Americans' phones calls because, he claims, it doesn't have the voice content: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-06-18/news/40049388_1_nsa-president-barack-obama-national-security-agency


***

Much of the President's credibility on this issue rides on the accuracy of his assertions made to Charley Rose that NSA's "2015 program" keeps only phone call metadata and does not collect voice content. As he put it, the NSA doesn't listen to Americans phone calls because that data isn't kept. "There is no content. " But, is that true? The Post's revelation about NUCLEON certainly contributes to the doubts about that claim.

The President's interview with Rose is excerpted at length, below:


****
The WaPo report of June 15 goes into some detail about these previously unknown surveillance programs:



***

Obama's statement is confusing, and appears to contradict reported facts, as it seems to say that voice content is not collected.

Read it again. He seems perfectly clear on this:

"Then, what the NSA can do is it can query that database to see did this number pop up? Did they make any other calls? And if they did, those calls will be spit out. A report will be produced. It will be turned over to the FBI. At no point is any content revealed because there's no content," Obama explained.

First, "There's no content." What did he mean by that? Does he mean to say that NSA doesn't collect content? Or, second, is he saying that NSA has no access to content, but other agencies that run their own 702 programs do - and, third, how are those two propositions really different?

His statement raises all three questions, as well as unfortunate questions about his full candor.

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Now available in orange, with extra added content at: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/20/1217474/-Yet-Another-NSA-Program-Raises-Questions-About-Obama-s-Statements-to-Charley-Rose?showAll=yes
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ON EDIT - The Guardian has released a new round of documents today that include the NSA's targeting rules and minimiization guidelines. See, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/20/exhibit-b-nsa-procedures-document and linked Part A. Have only briefly scanned them, but will note any significant new information in an updated version of this posting.

NSA Surveillance of 9/11 Plot Was Known to FBI

Outgoing FBI Director Robert Mueller made a startling claim yesterday to a Congressional Committee overseeing the NSA inquiry. The Director described how Khalid al-Midhar, one of the 9-11 hijackers, had called a Yemeni safe house from a phone in San Diego shortly before the attack. Mueller claims had today's surveillance system been in place, NSA surveillance of that call would have led to sharing of intelligence with the FBI and "derailed" the 9/11 attack. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/13/fbi-mueller-spy-tactics-9-11-boston

That isn't the complete truth, however. Court records from the trial of convicted co-conspiractor Zakaria Moussaoui shows the FBI was aware of NSA intercepts of Midhar and and his partner Nawaf al-Hazmi in the months leading up to 9/11, who went on to hijack Flt. 77 that slammed into the Pentagon. The pair had also met with the other principal 9/11 hijackers at various locations inside the US. Based in part on NSA wiretaps that were later withheld and suppressed, FBI agents had, in fact, located the pair inside the US in mid-2001, but the investigating agents were ordered to close their files after CIA refused to cooperate and pressured the Bureau to shut down several lines of field investigation that were focusing on the plotters.

Mueller's claims omit those key facts. The Director instead stated that Khalid al-Midhar was being monitored by intelligence agencies, but “they lost track of him,” Mueller said. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2013/0613/Secret-NSA-program-could-have-derailed-9-11-attacks-FBI-director-says-video

FBI Director Mueller doesn't explain why. He instead told Congress that intelligence officials did not know that it was Midhar who called a Yemen safehouse to discuss progress of the plot. The NSA monitoring program could have changed that, Mueller argued, potentially leading to the "derailing" of the plot. In fact, the FBI field investigators had already tried to get CIA to reveal the NSA surveillance records they knew already existed, but that line of investigation was shut down by headquarters. Mueller's statement is completely misleading in view of the actual events and decisions taken by ranking intelligence officials to sidetrack ongoing FBI investigations into the al-Qaeda operation during 2001:



Moussaoui Court Records Show CIA Suppression of Ongoing FBI Investigation

http://landing.newsinc.com/shared/video.html?freewheel=90962&sitesection=csmonitor&VID=24880556

We've learned a great deal about 9/11 that confirmed earlier information that points to sabotage of FBI field investigations of the 9/11 hijackers known by both CIA and FBI to be inside the U.S. We also see a chain of malfeasance and dereliction of duty that reaches up into the White House in the handling of the known threat presented by the presence of the soon to be Flt.-77 hijackers, Nawaf Al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar.

The following summary also sheds light on the role that previously unpublicized NSA surveillance had, and how willful misinterpretation of FISA requirements led to FBI surveillance of the Flt. 77 plot being shut down. The "DE" references, below, refer to specific Defense Exhibits in the Moussaoui trial.

(Note: Much of what we now know about the 9/11 plot the material introduced by the defense. http://www.salon.com/2012/06/19/new_nsa_docs_reveal_911_truths/singleton/)



CIA Ordered FBI Warning Cable Withheld - 9/11 Attacks Could Have Been Thwarted in Jan. 2000


On January 15, 2000, Flt. 77 hijackers, al-Hazmi and al-Nidhar landed at LA Int'l Airport after attending an al-Qaeda planning summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. According to testimony given by CIA Director Tenet to the 2002 Joint Congressional Inquiry, the CIA and a dozen allied agencies had that meeting under intensive surveillance. Shortly thereafter, an FBI liaison officer in the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center drafted a warning cable about the arrival in the US of the pair, but never sent it.

Why? She was ordered to withhold it by the CIA-CTC Assistant Director.

If that cable had been sent, the presence of the Flt. 77 hijackers and the other 9/11 attack groups would have been known to a much wider group of FBI agents and offices, including John P. O'Neill's I-95 anti-terrorism unit in New York, who would have immediately understood the significance, and ordered both human surveillance and FISA warrant coverage, which would have certainly been granted under the law then in place. Contrary to the testimony yesterday given by Director Mueller, FISA law as it existed before the Patriot Act would have allowed the FBI access to any electronic surveillance of al-Hazmi and al-Midhar, who were foreign nationals and known terrorists. Units of the FBI did obtain access to some of the NSA "take", but under pressure from CIA, these investigators were denied use of this intelligence and access to further electronic coverage.

Here's what the Wiki page for O'Neill says about that:

(and nor has any other defender of the Universal Surveillance State run by Ma Bell) of how this $80 billion Panopticon has protected us from any foreign terrorists. Not one example in a decade of operation.


Give us an example, Steven. We're not going to take merely your word on that. Even if there had been a dozen, that might still be a poor Return on Investment unless we know the specifics. If we're being asked to sacrifice the Fourth Amendment, we need proof that allowing the Telephone Company to record our every word is both necessary and effective.

The President needs a new analyst if he thinks he can continue to operate this way without a consensus of support for the Program.

about Obama's exercise routine than . . . well, you get it.

Google, Facebook, Amazon, Your Creditscore.com all are part of the NSA database. We all have a series of numbers associated with us that, together, as run through the NSA's own algorithms and those used by its customer agencies within the IC, altogether this creates a real-time profile and predictive score of our intentions and potentials in a dozen different scales. It determines the jobs we're eligible for, what areas we can access, how we can travel . . . none of this should be a surprise to any conscious person in America. But, most choose to be ruled by distraction and to cope by avoidance behaviors, like staring at their phones large parts of the day.

Greetings e-citizen #. Feels good to rant.

In a post on The Guardian's website, Glenn Greenwald seemed to suggest that another major revelation about mass telephone surveillance might be imminent.

"I'm Looking Forward to future revelations that are coming (and coming shortly), not Looking Backward to ones that have already come," Greenwald wrote. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/07/whistleblowers-and-leak-investigations

Proof of Universal Profiling of phone users in America is likely among those "future revelations."



In 2008, Congress legalized much of the Bush-era NSA Program with passage of the FISA Amendment Act (FAA). The FAA alludes to some safeguards for data acquired by "drift net" surveillance that was legalized. The personal data safeguards that have been put in place are likely those described in Jane Mayer's bio of NSA whistleblower Bill Binney, who developed the "Thin Thread" surveillance program. However, Binney also revealed something else to Mayer - the existence of computerized profiling software at the heart of Thin Thread.

Binney detailed the NSA program to Mayer, who describes it this way in a 2011 article published in The New Yorker.: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all



After 9/11, Binney revealed, the Bush Administration simply ran Thin Thread without the anonymizing feature, as they wanted to conduct self-targeted investigations and a modified version of Thin Thread offered that capability. After the NSA scandals attendant to the NYT disclosures, in 2006, it appears that feature in Binney's original design was reinstalled, and the system instead operates according to computerized profiling.

Is everyone who makes a telephone call in America now automatically profiled for indicators of terrorist activities? That seems likely to be one of the "future revelations" alluded to by Greenwald.

Until yesterday, if you had posted with a straight face, "Your phone is tapped," most people would have blinked, laughed, and the DU debunking squad would be all over you. You might have been painted with the dreaded "Conspiracy Theorist" label. That has changed with Glenn Greenwald's article in The Guardian and, most importantly, a copy of an Order issued in April by the FISA Court instructing Verizon to turn over all its records of phone calls made inside the United States, including purely local call records between US Citizens.

The fact is that this is a domestic program being conducted on an “ongoing basis,” (according to The Washington Post, the order has been renewed every 90 days since 2006) – has people asking for information. But, this isn't new, it just confirms the details of what has been known about "The Program" since massive domestic wiretapping was first revealed by The New York Times in 2004.

Now, suddely, people want information, and the topic doesn't seem so . Here's a relatively brief summary of what's publicly known about the government's key surveillance programs and how they actually work:





*"Stellar Wind" is one codename for The Program. Another that is publicly known is "Thin Thread."


For a detailed discussion of Thin Thread, see Jane Mayer's 2011 profile of NSA whistleblower Bill Binney,

Going backwards, related programs included Trailblazer, an NSA program that focused on interception and analysis of data carried on web communications networks, cell phones, VOIP, and e-mail. After receiving adverse publicity Trailblazer was shutdown but reportedly morphed into the NSA Turbulance Program. Thin Thread was a rival NSA program that went operational, resulting in massive domestic surveillance. This is described by Jane Mayer in a 2011 New Yorker article: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all



Binney described Thin Thread to Mayer, who describes The Program this way:



In addition to NSA's Thinthread and Trailblazer programs, DIA operated its own domestic-focused pre-9/11 surveillance program. At least one of these monitored AQ cells operating inside the US. The story of the Able Danger has been well documented and fairly widely known. Able Danger was shut down by Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Steve Cambone in late 2000-early 2001 after it had mapped out the Al Qaeda support cell inside the US supporting Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 attack cell members. That operation built up a social network analysis focusing electronic surveillance on members of the so-called Brooklyn Cell that had remained in place after its establishment by CIA as part of Operation Cyclone, the Agency's operation that recruited and trained Jihadis for war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Much of bin Laden's organization grew out of the US and Saudi organized covert operations against the Russia and its allies in Central Asia and the oil-rich region of the Transcaucasus that flared up again as wars in Bosnia, Kosovo, Dagestan, and Chechnya.

As early as 1997, as the US and Saudi paramilitary organized by bin Laden were cooperating in Kosovo, US intelligence officials were bragging that they had "mapped out" bin Laden's financial and donor network by human and technical means. Al Qaeda was already the focus of multiple surveillance operations inside the US, but this was gravely complicated by intelligence agencies from several countries stumbling over each other and the fatal duplicity of their network of interwoven double-agents that created the opportunity for the 9/11 attacks.

NSA and DIA technical collection and analysis, elsewhere referred as "The Program" survived the reorganization of intelligence that followed 9/11, and the closing down some legacy programs that followed a series of disclosures and scandals involving "The Program" in the middle of the decade. Part of this was described by Shane Harris in The National Journal, "TIA LIVES ON":
February 23, 2006, http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2006/0223nj1.htm or http://mediachannel.org/blog/node/3509

As early as February 2003, the Pentagon planned to use Genoa II technologies at the Army's Information Awareness Center at Fort Belvoir, Va., according to an unclassified Defense budget document. The awareness center was an early tester of various TIA tools, according to former employees. A 2003 Pentagon report to Congress shows that the Army center was part of an expansive network of intelligence agencies, including the NSA, that experimented with the tools. The center was also home to the Army's Able Danger program, which has come under scrutiny after some of its members said they used data-analysis tools to discover the name and photograph of 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta more than a year before the attacks.

The other project has been re-designated "TopSail" (formerly Genoa II) and would provide IT tools to help anticipate and preempt terrorist attacks. SAIC has also been contracted to work on Topsail, including a US$3.7 million contract in 2005.

The Matrix Project and Your Terrorism Quotient (TQ)

Finally, we come to what may have been the most tin foilish program of all, Matrix, (yes, there really was one named that before the movie) Wish I were only kidding. But, according to this 2004 article, The Matrix program was in the works that had the potential to profile every American and assign each of us a Terrorism Quotient (TQ): http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-05-20-terror-database_x.htm?csp=34 ; see, related Cong. Research Service Study: http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RL32536.pdf‎



Now, if that early profiling program was similarly developed, your Terrorism Quotient (TQ), goes with IQ into your permanent record.

Yes, your Permanent Record.