ADMINISTRATION ADDRESSES PRIVACY CONCERNS ON TERROR CENTER
Americans’ privacy rights won’t be affected by Bush Administration’s proposed Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), officials of FBI, CIA and Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) told Senate lawmakers Wed. Comments -- by Winston Wiley, CIA assoc. dir. of central intelligence for homeland security; Pasquale D'Amuro, FBI exec. asst. dir.- counterterrorism; and Gordon England, DHS deputy secy. -- came at 2nd hearing of Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on TTIC. Committee Chmn. Collins (R-Me.) called hearing to try to nail down specifics of Administration’s implementation plans.
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Committee’s first hearing on TTIC (CD Feb 18 p8) sparked several key questions, Collins said. Among those were whether TTIC adequately would address privacy and other legal concerns. Bush’s proposal would put Dir. of Central Intelligence in charge of TTIC, where he would be responsible for analysis of both foreign and domestic intelligence, she said. Privacy rights could be endangered by combining law enforcement functions with intelligence gathering and analysis, she said. TTIC potentially would have access to “huge databases” of information from its component agencies such as FBI and CIA Counterterrorism Center (CTC), Collins said. “I understand that the Administration has reviewed the legal issues carefully,” she said, “but I want to ensure that the Center’s activities will not infringe on the constitutional rights of American citizens.”
Privacy concerns have been part of discussion about TTIC from beginning, said Wiley, who chairs Senior Steering Group charged with figuring out how to implement Bush’s vision. TTIC’s role will be to analyze intelligence information, he said, and any implementing plan will have to ensure that authority for collection operations, such as CIA and FBI, remains separate from authority vested in center. From “day one,” Wiley said, TTIC will make sure it complies with all applicable laws and Executive Orders and that it doesn’t violate privacy and civil rights.
Collection of information will continue to be overseen by Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, the Attorney Gen. and others, D'Amuro said. Creation of TTIC won’t change that, he said, because TTIC simply analyzes data. England said DHS, which would have statutorily mandated privacy officer, also would exercise oversight to ensure that citizens rights weren’t breached.
While not much is known yet about TTIC, its apparent plan for seamless integration of foreign and domestic intelligence raises same issues as Total Information Awareness program does, said David Sobel, gen. counsel of Electronic Privacy Information Center. TTIC could be another tool for collecting information on public, he said. It raises lot of interesting questions, Sobel said, which “fortunately” now are beginning to be asked.
Committee members continued to wrestle Wed. with what Collins called 2 key questions raised by TTIC proposal: (1) How would TTIC be an improvement over existing intelligence structure? (2) What was being done to ensure that TTIC would streamline and consolidate intelligence analysis rather than creating duplication and mission confusion? Senators pressed witnesses for answers on which agency would have primary responsibility for analyzing intelligence data, prompting Collins to say her committee needed more “definition on who is going to do what.”
Question of who is responsible for analyzing information goes to heart of TIA debate, Sobel said. More and more agencies are trying to step up their ability to collect data with no clear system in place to analyze them effectively, he said. Even assuming TIA or TTIC can work, he said, if gathering all that intelligence doesn’t demonstrably increase security, there’s no need to do it. And that has to be resolved before anyone can even begin to get to privacy issues, he said.