The
Militarization Of U.S.
Public Service Agencies
By Laurel Federbush
09 September, 2007
Global
Research
According to the 2005 Strategy
for Homeland Defense and Civil Support, "the terrorist enemy now
considers the US homeland a preeminent part of the global theater of
combat, and so must we."
The program of "defense
transformation," initiated by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
included, among other things, two particular concepts: "persistent
surveillance" and the need to "deny the enemy sanctuary."
In military thinking, these concepts give rise to the need for constant
monitoring of individuals suspected of being terrorists.
There is a special term for
that: "Tagging, Tracking, and Locating." The Defense Science
Board’s 2004 Summer Study entitled Transition To and From Hostilities
has a whole chapter on this, called "Identification, Location,
and Tracking in Asymmetric Warfare." "Asymmetric warfare,"
incidentally, refers to war not against other countries but against
unconventional enemies, such as "terrorists." According to
the first paragraph of the Study: "U.S. military forces currently
have a superb capability for finding and tracking conventional war targets,
such as weapons and military facilities. However, these intelligence
assets have a poor capability for finding, identifying, and tracking
unconventional war targets, such as individuals and insurgent or terrorist
groups that operate by blending in with the larger society."
The study suggests: "Tagging
individuals and material can provide a powerful new tool for locating
these modern threats. A tag is defined as something that is attached
to the item to be located and/or tracked, which increases its ability
to be detected or its probability of identification by a surveillance
system suitably tuned to the tag. Tags can be either active (such as
radio-emitting tags) or passive (such as radio frequency identification
[RFID] tags)." It also says: "The technologies for tagging
and associated surveillance represent a very important area for research
and technology development." The report goes so far as to recommend
a "Manhattan Project"-like focus on tagging, tracking, and
locating. (The Manhattan Project was the effort during World War Two
to develop the first nuclear weapons.)
One organization working
on tagging, tracking, and locating technologies is the Technical Support
Working Group. The Technical Support Working Group, or TSWG, is funded
by the Department of Defense and the Department of State, and has many
divisions, all of which do research in counterterrorism technology.
One of these divisions is the Surveillance, Collection, and Operations
Support Subgroup. This Subgroup includes the National Security Agency,
the Secret Service, the FBI, the Special Operations Command, the Defense
Intelligence Agency, and the National Reconnaissance Office. One of
its projects is Tagging, Tracking, and Locating, which is sometimes
referred to as "TTL." The Secret Service, in fact, has been
specifically charged by the Department of Homeland Security with spearheading
the use of TTL. The subgroup also works on special sensor technologies–sensors
being frequently associated with target tracking and other military
surveillance applications. According to this subgroup’s own literature,
its programs are "classified or highly sensitive. Program requirements,
the success of programs, and specific program capabilities cannot be
discussed in an open document."
One of TSWG’s member
entities, the Special Operations Command (SOCOM), has been given power,
under the Bush administration, to engage in counterterrorism actions
all over the world. SOCOM is allowed to operate within the United States
under certain circumstances. According to the SOCOM 2002 Report Layout,
the Special Operations Command "is more heavily involved in Homeland
Defense taskings than originally had been expected, with no let-up in
sight." The Report also observes: "...there is a tendency
to suggest new roles and missions for the American military, and in
particular SOF [i.e. Special Operations Forces] in the Homeland Defense
realm." The Report expressed the opinion that "care must be
taken to avoid diluting SOF’s capabilities by diverting forces
to domestic missions, which other agencies should be performing."
Exactly what these domestic missions are, however, is not public knowledge.
Another organization working
on TTL technology is the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology
Center–Northeast Region (NLECTC-NE). The NLECTC-NE is actually
co-located with the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Information
Directorate, in Rome, New York, which develops various kinds of surveillance
technology. The fact that these two entities share a location is no
coincidence; in fact, they have a partnership which includes the transfer
of military technology to law enforcement.
Another radio frequency identification
project being sponsored by the military and developed at the Oak Ridge
National Laboratory, at least some of whose details are publicly available,
is called "Total Asset Visibility," and it calls for implantable
sensors to be used in American soldiers to monitor their physiological
reactions to warfare and to keep track of location. The Army Research
Office’s Soldier Status Monitoring Project envisions a day when
implantable sensors will enable the military to control soldiers’
physiological reactions from afar. If this kind of dehumanizing technology
is being developed for American soldiers, one can only wonder what the
U.S. government would be willing to do to those it labels "terrorists."
These tracking methods are
dependent on certain radio systems’ being in place.
The Integrated Wireless Network,
or IWN, is a project to link the Departments of Justice, Treasury, and
Homeland Security, and later, the Department of Defense, with one secure,
interoperable communications system. "Interoperable" means,
basically, that all the radio systems and other communications equipment
of one department would be compatible with those of the other departments
and all the personnel of these different departments could talk to each
other without any technological barriers. Development of the IWN has
been assigned to the military contractor General Dynamics, along with
its various subcontractors. Its systems would be APCO Project 25-compliant,
meaning that they would conform to a set of standards developed by the
Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials - International
(APCO) to facilitate interoperability. The Special Operations Command,
it should be noted, uses APCO Project 25-compliant radios.
The Integrated Wireless Network
would operate at 700 MHz, a frequency that enables it to penetrate walls
and buildings easily. Needless to say, it also penetrates people easily,
and there is evidence linking the 700 MHz frequency to increased risk
of cancer.
The Integrated Wireless Network
contains an IP backbone, which enables the operation of a number of
wireless surveillance devices in the 2.4 Ghz range. Given that this
is the same frequency range used by microwave ovens, it is hardly surprising
that devices in the 2.4 Ghz range have been linked in certain studies
to cancer and other health risks.
Zigbee is one of the 2.4
GHz wireless technologies enabled by the IWN, and it is used in wireless
sensor networks, a means of location tracking. Zigbee, of which the
Eaton Corporation is a chief proponent, is being marketed as a means
of tracking cattle, but it also has the capability for the location
tracking of individual people, which is one of the aims of the Secret
Service, a primary user of the Integrated Wireless Network.
The militarization of U.S.
public service agencies, and the co-opting of public safety radio systems
for use as surveillance instruments to track dissidents’ every
move, must be resisted if Americans hope to retain any degree of freedom
or dignity.
Laurel Federbush is a freelance harpist based in Ann
Arbor, Michigan. She is also an activist against intrusive government
surveillance projects as a result of personally witnessing their use
against low-income African-Americans in the Detroit area
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