A Former FBI Agent Joins the ACLU -- and Finds Symmetry in Opposition

Cross posted from my home base.

My friend Steven Kotler, a man of prodigious turnout, recently wrote a fascinating story about a former FBI agent who left the bureau for the ACLU. The agent, Mike German, was a once-politically conservative crack undercover agent, compiling evidence in two of the most successful domestic terrorism cases in history.

What forced German into the arms of the agency's rival? In German's last undercover case -- a conspiracy between natural pals: Islamic fundamentalists and American neo-Nazis -- the bosses tried to use his evidence improperly. He cried foul. They tried to transfer him. He said no. Thereupon began his descent into dreaded Whistlblower status, which if you work for the military or intelligence community means that you are not a patriot adhering to rule of law, but a crazy person. (Hey, it worked for the Soviets!) The spy who was left out in the cold found a new home at the ACLU, where he uses his insider knowledge to hold his former employer's feet to the fire. Surprisingly, German points out the similarity between his unlikely career paths:

After two years on the outside, he decided the best way he could continue being useful was to join the ACLU. "With the FBI, I saw a lot of very brave people do a lot of very dangerous things. At the ACLU, I see the exact same thing--but these people aren't out there with flak vests and big guns taking on the bad guys. They don't have the weight of the federal government behind them. They stand alone, unprotected, saying this will not happen on my watch. I wanted to be a part of that."

Among German's projects at the ACLU is leading the charge against "fusion centers." These are repositories for "information sharing," meaning places where the government tries to collect data on its citizens from public and private sources -- doctors, credit card bills, financial information, shopping records, travel arrangements, gambling habits -- and look for patterns. This is the data mining that we heard so much about just after 9/11. Computers were going to help us find the next twenty hijackers. Or, as Rumsfeld would have put it, data mining would help us know those infamous unknowns. Remember all this? The Pentagon called it Total Information Awareness at first, and, reassuringly,their logo was an eyeball shining a light ray out of a pyramid, with the inscription Scientia Est Potentia. Well, it turned out people didn't like the idea of their scientia as the government's potentia.Total Information Awereness was disbanded, but in name only. Data mining lives on as a key technological holy grail for the intelligence community. Now, after revelations about Bush's illegal warrantless eavesdropping and the revised FISA, data mining's inherent dangers to privacy seem even more notable. Especially because, as German points out, data mining doesn't work:

"The whole data-mining model doesn't work," he says. "We're sub-contracting to companies who want to solve terrorism with technology. It's pure snake oil." Explaining this, German likes to point out that pro football teams use much narrower data sets to scout rookies than the government does hunting terrorists, but they still draft a guy like Ryan Leaf. "If this kind of predictive analysis really worked, these companies would be selling their services in Vegas or on Wall Street. Vegas and Wall Street aren't buying it--only the government is."

I did an interview in 2003 with Usama Fayyad, one of the world's data mining experts. Fayad is a data mining booster, with his own consulting company, DigiMine. He was also editor in chief of Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, the primary technical journal on data mining technology. And he was very candid about the limitations of that technology for intelligence gathering:

UF: That's true, and let me give you a tougher scenario. It's one thing to rate a credit card transaction for its likelihood of being fraudulent. But as soon as you start looking for groupings of people, like terrorist networks, which is what Total Information Awareness needs to do, you now have an exponential problem. Because if there are N entities, there's an exponential number in N of possible subgroupings. You're looking for ten people, you don't know which ten, among millions, and that's an absolutely astronomical number of combinations.

BLVR: That's a whole lot of evidence extracting and link discovering.

UF: Yes, but it's not impossible. It's just very challenging. It's never been done on this scale. It's like putting a man on the moon. If they really want to get it done, it will require a lot of resources, the best people in the country, and so on.

That was in 2003. And German is saying the same thing today. Fayad isn't saying its impossible. He just says it would require a commitment like the Apollo project. Which begs the question or whether those resources wouldn't be better spent on developing human intelligence rather than spying on our citizenry?

Comments

[LiberalBuzz]

Good to read this story.

I joined the ACLU in 1991 and when idjits start railing on them the first thing I mention is I am a card carrying member of the ACLU and if they want to talk truth and not the usual rightwing pack of lies, let's get into it.

Surprising the amount of people who have no idea of what the ACLU really does. They just listen to the rightwing America haters and believe the spin put on stories the rightwing media lie about.

[walk0nwalls]

If y'all haven't heard Mike German's story This American Life did a bit on him and seriously, this guy got f%$ked just for doing his job.

[andyg]

whay about Joe the plumbers rights.

[MuseScavenger]

Huh? Use real words and complete sentences, please. ...and stay on topic.

[VietVet45]

It is always good to see people support the ACLU. There are also other good organizations that work to protect citizens and the Constitution. Among them: Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.

[Oldchef]

I joined the ACLU because they were the only ones trying to hold back the Bush administration's assaults on the Constitution. I found it hard to believe that someone who had sworn to protect and defend the Constitution was seemingly doing his damndest to destroy it, and nobody except the ACLU was speaking out or trying to do anything to stop him. Please, if you're concerned with individual freedom and defense of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, join the ACLU or at least donate a little money. No one else is looking out for the citizens.

[kareemachan]

Yup, we don't have a lot of money, but one of Shrub's moves prompted us to join ACLU. I have the greatest respect for them and their work.

[Yermammy]

THAT is the best and most heartwarming news of the week! Go ACLU. Fighting for all of our rights, even when we're too stupid too. Great news, indeed! Now, let's get the new FISA bill overturned!!

[naschkatze]

As a member of the ACLU, I say this is a heart-warming story. The ACLU's only agenda is to protect civil rights for all citizens, and Mr. German's coming over to our side may well help redress the lies the right-wing have spread about us.

[Peter007]

The ACLU is out there protecting the people from the abuses of government. Usually through the Bill of Rights. Thanks for being a Patriot.