US surveillance to spy on spies, in fear of another Snowden
10 March 2014, 19:50 -- US surveillance plans to introduce a surveillance system which will keep track of the records of about 5 million federal employees with access to state secrets. The officials say it needs to be done to avoid a potential risk to the US interests and protect the government from another Edward Snowden.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that the organization will collect and process information about such employees from various databases.
Despite the high cost of such a system, high-ranking officials are determined to implement it by September 2015, and a year later - to bring it to perfection, excluding the possibility of another Edward Snowden to ruin the work of their lives.
'We need is a system of continuous evaluation where when someone is in the system and they're cleared initially, then we have a way of monitoring their behavior, both their electronic behavior on the job as well as off the job,' Clapper said, noting that the currently existing system for vetting decency is not enough.
Information about employees will be extracted from a variety of sources, such as private credit agencies, law enforcement databases, licenses and social media. Any deviation from the norm in a person's behavior may present interest for tracking officers who intend to use the data to prevent unwanted actions.
Currently, the system is mirrors Pentagon's Automated Continuous Evaluation System (ACES), a $ 84 million program designed by researchers from the California-based Defense Personnel and Security Research Center and defense contractor Northrop Grumman, which is not yet fully functional.
One of the researchers even considered including databases on the physical and mental health of a person in the program's tracking mechanism, but at the last moment rejected this option due to concerns about possible lawsuits from organizations defending individual rights and freedoms.
Under Insider Threat Program proposed in July employees must now report the strange behavior of their colleagues and the significant changes in their lives such as divorce, financial problems, work at irregular hours, frequent travels - all that could potentially 'harm the United States.'
The Pentagon and the NSA have also stepped up their activities and work to develop programs that will help prevent a recurrence of the situation with Edward Snowden, fugitive employee of the CIA and the NSA contractor, who last year unveiled a huge number of provocative information incriminating the US surveillance agencies for spying at both high-ranking world politicians and ordinary citizens of the country alike.
Voice of Russia
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