Pentagon spies are treating the homeland like a war zone.

For the first time since the Civil War, the United States has been
designated a military theater of operations. The Department of Defense
- which includes the NSA - is focusing its vast resources on the
homeland. And it is taking an unprecedented role in domestic spying.

It may be legal. But it circumvents three decades of efforts by
Congress to restrict government surveillance of Americans under the
guise of national security. And it represents a profound shift in the
role of the military operating inside the United States. What's at
stake here is the erosion of the principle, embedded in the 1878 Posse
Comitatus Act, that the U.S. military not be used for domestic law
enforcement.

When the administration declared the United States to be a theater of
military operations in 2002, it created a U.S. Northern Command, which
set up intelligence centers in Colorado and Texas to analyze the
domestic threat. But these are not the military's only domestic
intelligence efforts. According to the Congressional Research Service,
the Pentagon controls "a substantial portion" of U.S. national
intelligence assets, the traditional turf of the FBI and CIA. Like 80%
of the budget.

Sounds like a job for SuperVince.



http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-donohue18may18,0,7143757.story?coll=la-home-commentary
From the Los Angeles Times
Battlefield: U.S.
Pentagon spies are treating the homeland like a war zone.
By Laura K. Donohue
LAURA K. DONOHUE is a fellow at Stanford University's Center for
International Security and Cooperation. A longer article on this topic
will appear next month in Northwestern School of Law's Journal o

May 18, 2006

TODAY, THE Senate Intelligence Committee will begin questioning Air
Force Gen. Michael Hayden, nominated to be director of the Central
Intelligence Agency, about the National Security Agency's collection of
U.S. citizens' telephone records.

The scrutiny of the NSA is deserved, but the Senate and the American
public may be missing a broader and more disturbing development. For
the first time since the Civil War, the United States has been
designated a military theater of operations. The Department of Defense
- which includes the NSA - is focusing its vast resources on the
homeland. And it is taking an unprecedented role in domestic spying.

It may be legal. But it circumvents three decades of efforts by
Congress to restrict government surveillance of Americans under the
guise of national security. And it represents a profound shift in the
role of the military operating inside the United States. What's at
stake here is the erosion of the principle, embedded in the 1878 Posse
Comitatus Act, that the U.S. military not be used for domestic law
enforcement.

When the administration declared the United States to be a theater of
military operations in 2002, it created a U.S. Northern Command, which
set up intelligence centers in Colorado and Texas to analyze the
domestic threat. But these are not the military's only domestic
intelligence efforts. According to the Congressional Research Service,
the Pentagon controls "a substantial portion" of U.S. national
intelligence assets, the traditional turf of the FBI and CIA.

In 2003, Congress created the job of undersecretary of Defense for
intelligence to oversee the department's many intelligence bodies -
including a new entity called Counterintelligence Field Activity, or
CIFA.

CIFA was ordered to maintain a "domestic law-enforcement database" on
"potential terrorist threats" to U.S. military installations, and it
began collecting information on U.S. citizens.

In 2005, a presidential commission suggested that CIFA, set up as a
clearinghouse for information, be empowered to conduct domestic
investigations into crimes such as treason, espionage and terrorism.
Astoundingly, the commission declared that such an expansion of
military powers would not require congressional approval; a
presidential order and Pentagon directive would suffice. One Defense
Department program feeding information to CIFA is TALON (Threat and
Local Observation Notice), which is supposed to obtain data from
"concerned citizens and military members regarding suspicious
incidents" that could herald terrorist attacks. But the military
appears to have interpreted its mandate broadly. A TALON report was
filed on a protest against "war profiteering" by Halliburton, Newsweek
reported. The protesters alleged the defense contractor overcharged for
food for U.S. troops in Iraq.

Counterintelligence reports were also filed on New York University's
OUTlaw, a decades-old organization of openly gay law students. "The
term 'outlaw' is a backhanded way of saying it's all right to commit
possible violence," concluded one misguided military investigator in a
document obtained last month under the Freedom of Information Act." NBC
reported that about four dozen TALON database entries on "suspicious
incidents" were not about terrorism but about opposition to the Iraq
war and military recruiting.

These misguided military forays into domestic surveillance harken back
to Vietnam War-era abuses. This time, they are the result of a much
broader intelligence-gathering effort by the military on U.S. soil.
President Bush said last week, "We're not mining or trolling through
the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans." But a 2004
survey by the General Accounting Office found 199 data-mining
operations that collect information ranging from credit-card statements
to medical records. The Defense Department had five programs on
intelligence and counterterrorism.

The Defense Intelligence Agency, created in 1961 to provide foreign
military intelligence, now uses "Verity K2" software to scan U.S.
intelligence files and the Internet "to identify foreign terrorists or
Americans connected to foreign terrorism activity," and "Inxight Smart
Discovery" software to help identify patterns in databases. CIFA has
reportedly contracted with Computer Sciences Corp. to buy
identity-masking software, which could allow it to create fake websites
and monitor legitimate U.S. sites without leaving clues that it had
been there. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is collecting
data from 133 U.S. cities; intelligence sources told the Los Angeles
Times that, when collection is completed, the agency would be able to
identify occupants in each house, their nationality and even their
political affiliation.

In 2002, the Defense Department launched the granddaddy of all
data-mining efforts, Total Information Awareness, to trawl through all
government and commercial databases available worldwide. In 2003,
concerned about privacy implications, Congress cut its funding. But
many of the projects simply transferred to other Defense Department
agencies. Two of the most important, the Information Awareness
Prototype System and Genoa II, moved to NSA headquarters.

The Pentagon argues that its monitoring of U.S. citizens is legal.
"Contrary to popular belief, there is no absolute ban on intelligence"
agencies collecting information on Americans or disseminating it, says
a memo by Robert Noonan, deputy chief of staff for intelligence.
Military intelligence agents can receive any information "from anyone,
any time," Noonan wrote.

Throughout U.S. history, we have struggled to balance security concerns
with the protection of individual rights, and a thick body of law
regulates domestic law enforcement agencies' behavior. Congress should
think twice before it lets the behemoth Defense Department into
domestic law enforcement.

.

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