The Center for Public Integrity

President George W. Bush used the second anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks not only to praise the controversial USA Patriot Act but to promote further expanding federal law enforcement powers.

Of the 30 members of the Defense Policy Board, the government-appointed group that advises the Pentagon, at least nine have ties to companies that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002. Four members are registered lobbyists, one of whom represents two of the three largest defense contractors.

WASHINGTON, February 12, 2003 — A few days ago, the Center for Public Integrity obtained a copy of draft legislation that the Bush Administration has quietly prepared as a bold, comprehensive sequel to the USA Patriot Act. This proposed law would give the government breathtaking new powers to further increase domestic intelligence-gathering, surveillance and law enforcement prerogatives, and simultaneously decrease judicial review and public access to information.

WASHINGTON, February 7, 2003 — The Bush Administration is preparing a bold, comprehensive sequel to the USA Patriot Act passed in the wake of September 11, 2001, which will give the government broad, sweeping new powers to increase domestic intelligence-gathering, surveillance and law enforcement prerogatives, and simultaneously decrease judicial review and public access to information.

WASHINGTON, December 17, 2002 — It happened late on a Friday night, at my third airport of the day. As American Airlines Flight 3028 from St. Louis finished taxiing to a gate at Washington Dulles airport, the plane's Pavlovian bell sounded and we all stood up and began preparing to disembark. Directly in the row ahead of me, a man arose and I couldn't help but notice what he was wearing. Across the shoulders of his blue shirt were the following words: "Total Information Awareness."

The Total Information Awareness System, the controversial Pentagon research program that aims to gather and analyze a vast array of information on Americans, has hired at least eight private companies to work on the effort. Since 1997, those companies have won contracts from the Defense Department agency that oversees the program worth $88 million, the Center for Public Integrity has learned.

LONDON / WASHINGTON, June 12, 2002 — Even within the secretive world of private military companies, AirScan is noted for being unforthcoming about its operations. The Florida-based company has repeatedly refused to disclose what work it is doing in Europe, choosing instead to discuss the company's plans to track polar bears hibernating in the Arctic.

LONDON, June 12, 2002 — The flaw in the U.S. communications system is a Pentagon network called the Global Broadcasting Service (GBS), a new military satellite system begun in 1996. The system was designed to "provide efficient, direct broadcast of digital multimedia information" and give "deployed warfighters...high-bandwidth data imagery and video of critical information." It uses commercial broadcast satellite technology. But it was not originally intended to use ordinary commercial TV satellites.

LONDON, June 12, 2002 — If you heard anything, you would think it was a mosquito hovering, hunting for fresh prey. But in the dark night skies over the Balkan mountains, that distant, faint buzzing may mark a hunter of a different sort. Shrouded from view, loitering up to 16,000 feet in the air is a small army of robot spy planes used by Allied forces to watch for trouble. Every day, the spy planes are aloft to monitor the high mountain passes and deep valleys for illicit traffic, across routes in use for centuries to smuggle arms, drugs, even women destined for the sex business. In Afghanistan, some of the spy-in-the-sky observers can even be armed to fire missiles by remote control.

LONDON — The war on terrorism in Europe is being undermined by a military communications system that makes it easier for terrorists to tune in to live video of U.S. intelligence operations than to watch Disney cartoons or new-release movies.