Several thousand law enforcement agencies are creating the foundation of a domestic intelligence system through computer networks that analyze vast amounts of police information to fight crime and uncover terror plots. While federal authorities struggled to meet information-sharing mandates after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, police agencies on the West Coast poured millions of criminal and investigative records into shared digital repositories. These data warehouses give investigators and analysts new power to discern links among people, patterns of behavior and other hidden clues.
Those network efforts will expand as other police departments connect to a fledgling Justice Department system called the National Data Exchange (N-DEx). Federal authorities hope N-DEx will become what one called a “one-stop shop,” enabling federal law enforcement, counterterrorism and intelligence analysts to automatically examine the enormous caches of local and state records for the first time. [1]
The NSA call database was created by the National Security Agency starting in 2001. It contains hundreds of billions of records of telephone calls made by U.S. citizens from the four largest telephone carriers: AT&T, SBC, BellSouth (all three now being called AT&T since AT&T bought BellSouth and SBC purchased AT&T but kept the AT&T name), and Verizon. [2]
The existence of this database and the NSA program that compiled it was unknown to the general public until USA Today broke the story on May 10, 2006. [3] It is estimated that the database contains over 1.9 trillion call-detail records. According to Bloomberg News, the effort began approximately seven months before the September 11, 2001 attacks. [4]
Big Brother has hundreds of government and private sector data bases at his disposal. In time it will be virtually impossible for a person to not have their detailed personal file available to Big Brother. All of this will escalate during the Tribulation period when individual freedoms will be a thing of the past.
Student database
The Department of Education has taken a giant step toward creating a de facto national student database that will track students by their personal information from preschool through career. Although current federal law prohibits this, the department decided to ignore Congress and, in effect, rewrite the law. Student privacy and parental authority will suffer.
Buried deep within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (stimulus bill) were provisions encouraging states to develop data systems for collecting copious information on public-school kids. To qualify for stimulus money, states had to agree to build such systems according to federally dictated standards. So all 50 states either now maintain or are capable of maintaining extensive databases on public school students.
The administration wants this data to include much more than name, address and test scores. According to the National Data Collection Model, schools are to collect information on health-care history, family income and family voting status.
Even though current federal law prohibits a nationwide student database and strictly limits disclosure of a student’s personal information the Obama Administration is eager to create the database.
In April of 2001 the Education Department proposed regulations that would allow it and other agencies to share a student’s personal information with practically any government agency or even private company, as long as the disclosure could be said to support an evaluation of an “education program.”
The proposed regulations provoked a firestorm of criticism, but on December 2, 2011, the Department of Education rejected almost all the criticisms and released the regulations. As of January 3, 2012, interstate and intergovernmental access to your child’s personal information will be practically unlimited. The federal government will have a de facto nationwide database of supposedly confidential student information.
The department says this won’t happen. If the states choose to link their data systems, it says, that’s their business, but “the federal government would not play a role” in operating the resulting mega database. The department would have access to the data systems of each of the 50 states and would be allowed to share that data with anyone it chooses, as long as it uses the right language to justify the disclosure.
Just as the department used the promise of federal money to coerce the states into developing these systems, it would almost certainly do the same to make them link their systems. The result would be a nationwide student database, whether or not it is “operated” from an office in Washington. [5]
Endnotes
[1] O’Harrow, Robert, Jr. and Nakashima, Ellen. “National Dragnet Is a Click Away.” Washington Post. 3.06.2008. A01. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con tent/article/2008/03/05/AR2008030503656_ pf.html.
[2] www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm. [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Criminal_Intelligence_Sharing_Plan. [4] Shane, Scott. “Former Phone Chief Says Spy Agency Sought Surveillance Help Before14/business/14qwestr=1.
[5] Emmett McGroarty, Jane Robbins. How the feds are tracking your kid.” 12.28.2011.