Translingual Information Detection, Extraction and Summarization (TIDES) is a technology development program funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), focused on the automated processing and understanding of language data. The primary goal of the program is to enable English speakers to locate and interpret required information quickly and effectively regardless of the original language.
Computer and network surveillance is the monitoring of computer activity and data stored locally on a computer or data being transferred over computer networks such as the Internet. This monitoring is often carried out covertly and may be completed by governments, corporations, criminal organizations, or individuals. It may or may not be legal and may or may not require authorization from a court or other independent government agencies. Computer and network surveillance programs are widespread today and almost all Internet traffic can be monitored.
The Information Awareness Office (IAO) was established by the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in January 2002 to bring together several DARPA projects focused on applying surveillance and information technology to track and monitor terrorists and other asymmetric threats to U.S. national security by achieving "Total Information Awareness" (TIA).
The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), also known as the "Digital Telephony Act," is a United States wiretapping law passed in 1994, during the presidency of Bill Clinton.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. § 552, is the United States federal freedom of information law that requires the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased or uncirculated information and documents controlled by the U.S. government, state, or other public authority upon request. The act defines agency records subject to disclosure, outlines mandatory disclosure procedures, and includes nine exemptions that define categories of information not subject to disclosure. The act was intended to make U.S. government agencies' functions more transparent so that the American public could more easily identify problems in government functioning and put pressure on Congress, agency officials, and the president to address them. The FOIA has been changed repeatedly by both the legislative and executive branches.
Carnivore, later renamed DCS1000, was a system implemented by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that was designed to monitor email and electronic communications. It used a customizable packet sniffer that could monitor all of a target user's Internet traffic. Carnivore was implemented in October 1997. By 2005 it had been replaced with improved commercial software.
Carl Malamud is an American technologist, author, and public domain advocate, known for his foundation Public.Resource.Org. He founded the Internet Multicasting Service. During his time with this group, he was responsible for developing the first Internet radio station, for putting the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's EDGAR database on-line, and for creating the Internet 1996 World Exposition.
Mark S. Zaid is an American attorney, based in Washington, D.C., with a practice focused on national security law, freedom of speech constitutional claims, and government accountability.
The Automated Targeting System or ATS is a United States Department of Homeland Security computerized system that, for every person who crosses U.S. borders, scrutinizes a large volume of data related to that person, and then automatically assigns a rating for which the expectation is that it helps gauge whether this person may be placed within a risk group of terrorists or other criminals. Similarly ATS analyzes data related to container cargo.
A government database collects information for various reasons, including climate monitoring, securities law compliance, geological surveys, patent applications and grants, surveillance, national security, border control, law enforcement, public health, voter registration, vehicle registration, social security, and statistics.
The Digital Collection System Network (DCSNet) is the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)'s point-and-click surveillance system that can perform instant wiretaps on almost any telecommunications device in the US.
A data breach is a security violation, in which sensitive, protected or confidential data is copied, transmitted, viewed, stolen, altered or used by an individual unauthorized to do so. Other terms are unintentional information disclosure, data leak, information leakage and data spill. Incidents range from concerted attacks by individuals who hack for personal gain or malice, organized crime, political activists or national governments, to poorly configured system security or careless disposal of used computer equipment or data storage media. Leaked information can range from matters compromising national security, to information on actions which a government or official considers embarrassing and wants to conceal. A deliberate data breach by a person privy to the information, typically for political purposes, is more often described as a "leak".
Bank Julius Baer & Co. v. WikiLeaks, 535 F. Supp. 2d 980, was a lawsuit filed by Bank Julius Baer against the website WikiLeaks.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet civil liberties.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit advocacy and legal organization based in the United States.
MiTAP, or Mitre Text and Audio Processing, is a computer system that tries to automatically gather, translate, organize, and present information "for monitoring infectious disease outbreaks and other global events." It is also used in the FBI Investigative Data Warehouse.
The FBI Indexes, or Index List, was a system used to track American citizens and other people by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) before the adoption of computerized databases. The Index List was originally made of paper index cards, first compiled by J. Edgar Hoover at the Bureau of Investigations before he was appointed director of the FBI. The Index List was used to track U.S. citizens and others believed by the FBI to be dangerous to national security, and was subdivided into various divisions which generally were rated based on different classes of danger the subject was thought to represent.
The Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Information System, or NADDIS, is a data index and collection system operated by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Comprising millions of DEA reports and records on individuals, NADDIS is a system by which intelligence analysts, investigators and others in law enforcement retrieve reports from the DEA's Investigative Filing and Reporting System (IFRS). NADDIS is thought to have become the most widely used, if least known, tool in drug law enforcement.
The FISA Improvements Act is a proposed act by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Prompted by the disclosure of NSA surveillance by Edward Snowden, it would establish the surveillance program as legal, but impose some limitations on availability of the data. Opponents say the bill would codify warrantless access to many communications of American citizens for use by domestic law enforcement.
Emma Best is an American investigative reporter who gained national attention with their work for WikiLeaks and activist Julian Assange. Best is known for prolific filing of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on behalf of MuckRock and co-founding the whistleblower site Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets) which resulted in Best being investigated by the Department of Homeland Security and temporarily banned from filing FOIA requests.
