Update Dec. 3, 2005 -- Minneapolis is the second large airport in the country where TSA screeners have begun testing the new surveillance system, called Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques, or SPOT, Welna said.

SPOT is based on a profiling system at Boston's Logan International Airport. Rafi Ron, a former Israeli airport security expert, helped design the program in 2002 and his consulting company - New Age Security Solutions (NASS) - in McLean, Virginia, began training Minneapolis-St. Paul airport police in October 2004.

Police here have assigned teams to use the techniques on a "random basis" since then, airport police Lt. Shawn Chamberlain said. He said he's unaware of any potential terrorists who have been snared, but said the system improves police work.

Screeners should focus on those people most likely to cause problems, he said. Passenger profiling methods have been used successfully for three decades in Israel, he noted.

DHS details future border-control system
But can biometric identifiers really be a silver bullet?

Security Training at Statue of Liberty Conducted by NASS

"Mass transportation systems will always be vulnerable to some extent if we want to keep them as efficient as they are today."

NEW YORK July 23, 2005 -- Transport Workers Union Local 100, which represents 35,000 New York City transit workers, said the training fell short of what's needed. Tomorrow, the union will offer its members terrorism awareness and deterrence training by Rafi Ron, the chairman of New Age Security Solutions and the former head of security at Ben Gurion International Airport in Israel.

Statement by Rafi Ron to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs - September 21, 2005.

(AnonymousLiberal) - It's also worth pointing how breathtakingly hypocritical these leaks are. For years, the Bush administration has refused to acknowledge that it was involved in data-mining activities. When the USA Today reported in May 2006 that the administration was engaged in widespread data-mining, President Bush hastily convened a press conference in which he claimed that his administration was "not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans." He also noted angrily that "every time sensitive intelligence is leaked, it hurts our ability to defeat this enemy."

Now the existence of data-mining activities is being confirmed by anonymous administration officials--almost surely at the behest of the White House--solely in an effort to defend Alberto Gonzales from perjury charges.

Unless, of course, the NSA request for a warrant would be denied by the courts. And that's where it becomes interesting. The constitutional standard for issuing a search warrant is defined by the fourth amendment, which states:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

The constitutional standard for issuing a warrant for a particular search involves "probable cause, supported by an oath or affirmation." If NSA searches don't involve probable cause, then they would be denied a warrant. And if they are tapping American's phone calls under this warrantless program, they are tapping the phones of people who, by definition, are probably not terrorists. Thus, the most appropriate name for the program is the "Probably Not a Terrorist Surveillance Program."

Note that the President no longer talks about warrants, though he told the American people many times that "Law enforcement officers need a federal judge's permission to wiretap a foreign terrorist's phone, or to track his calls, or to search his property." The word "warrant" is no longer in the administration's vocabulary when discussing the NSA program.

As a secret service agent stands nearby, VP Dick Cheney views the Port of Tampa with (from left to right) Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Mayor Dick Greco of Tampa, Mayor Glenda Hood of Orlando, and Commissioner Tim Moore of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for a briefing on Florida's domestic security strategy. The Vice President visited the port to attend Florida's Regional Domestic Security Task Force meeting.  

October 24, 2002 - Here in Florida, I'm pleased to say, we have a model of how the homeland security effort should operate at the state level. Through the leadership of Governor Bush and the good work of many with us here today, Florida became one of the very first states in the nation to have its own comprehensive strategy for domestic security.

Aided by the work of the seven regional task forces, the Florida strategy covers emergency preparedness and response; health and bio-terrorism; information and intelligence; and border and port security.

...
For nearly 40 years Democratic and Republican Presidents, alike, have had the authority to determine that vital national security interests must take priority over standard rules of management and labor relations. This authority applies to every department and agency of the federal government. At a time when our nation is at war and the security of the American people is threatened as never before, it makes no sense to deny that authority in the one department that probably needs it most. If the President has that kind of authority in running the Agriculture Department, he should have the same authority in wartime when it comes to the department of homeland security.

DOJ - National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan

AP (FISA) requests have also uncovered "briefing points" dated January 2003 from a presentation delivered to Dick Cheney jointly by Seisint, Florida Governor Jeb Bush and a top Florida police official. This includes "Demonstrate HTF (High Terrorist Factor) with mapping." The May 2003 DoJ approval of Seisint as sole data contractor refers to software "applying 'terrorism quotient' in all cases."

ACLU - Utah and the MATRIX

My neighbor described to me an event which happened not long after the Patriot Act was enacted. Two FBI agents showed-up at his house and presented him with an e-mail he had written to his brother in Paris. The e-mail descibed how much he despised the Patriot Act and a list of phrases which would likely red-flag them. It was an act of civil disobedience. He has been pretty quiet the last several years after the visit. I thought I would try to put a human face on domestic spying.

Posted by:
Date: July 26, 2007 7:47 PM

It looks like here in TX, they are even going after affluent college students.  My son got a "confirmation" of registration notice in the mail stating that "someone" had contacted the Bexar Co. Election Supervisor, Jackie Callanan and stated he might not be legally residing in our fair county.  I suspect that State of Texas Republicans are challenging college-aged registered Democrats, probably those who voted absentee in '06.  It appears not to be a classic "caging" activity wherein letters are returned to sender then "caged" and challenged, because everything sent to our son at our home, his official residence, I forward to him when he is away at college, nothing is returned to sender through the mail as undeliverable.  It looks like they have found another method that just skirts legality, or Our Jackie is cooperating in some nefarious way with the TX Repubs because she is basically a nervous nellie about her job due to their gotcha over the "illegals" voting last year.  All 43 of 'em.  So, next week Little Harvard will be consulting a lawyer about this attempt to disenfranchise him.  We are lucky we know an activist Dem lawyer who will take this on pro bono, unlike most of the Bexar Co. kids I suspect got a similar notice in the mail this week.

by dksbook on Sat Jul 28th, 2007 at 06:23:24 AM PST

KING: In that regard, "The New York Times," which is -- as you said, it's not your favorite paper, reports it was you who dispatched Gonzales and Andy Card to then Attorney General John Ashcroft's hospital in 2004 to push Ashcroft to certify the president's intelligence gathering program.

Was it you?

CHENEY: I don't recall the -- first of all, I haven't seen the story. I don't recall that I gave instructions to that effect.

KING: That would be something you would recall.

CHENEY: I would think so. But, certainly, I was involved because I was a big advocate of the Terrorist Surveillance Program and had been responsible and been working with General Hayden and George Tenet to get it to the president for approval.

By the time this occurred, it had already been approved about 12 times by the Department of Justice. There was nothing sort of new about.

KING: But you didn't send them to get Ash...

CHENEY: I don't recall that I was the one who sent them to the hospital.

(Washington Post) August 1 - The Bush administration's chief intelligence official said yesterday that President Bush authorized a series of secret surveillance activities under a single executive order in late 2001. The disclosure makes clear that a controversial National Security Agency program was part of a much broader operation than the president previously described.

The disclosure by Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, appears to be the first time that the administration has publicly acknowledged that Bush's order included undisclosed activities beyond the warrantless surveillance of e-mails and phone calls that Bush confirmed in December 2005.

In a letter to Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), McConnell wrote that the executive order following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks included "a number of ... intelligence activities" and that a name routinely used by the administration -- the Terrorist Surveillance Program -- applied only to "one particular aspect of these activities, and nothing more."

"This is the only aspect of the NSA activities that can be discussed publicly, because it is the only aspect of those various activities whose existence has been officially acknowledged," McConnell said.

Data Mining Figured In Dispute Over NSA
Report Links Program to Gonzales Uproar