Project Vigilant
= volunteer group who monitors data about private internet activities to the U.S. government
Description
Glenn Greenwald:
"There's very little public information about this organization, but what they essentially are is some sort of vigilante group that collects vast amount of private data about the Internet activities of millions of citizens, processes that data into usable form, and then literally turns it over to the U.S. Government, claiming its motive is to help the Government detect Terrorists and other criminals. From the Forbes report:
According to Uber, one of Project Vigilant's manifold methods for gathering intelligence includes collecting information from a dozen regional U.S. Internet service providers (ISPs). Uber declined to name those ISPs, but said that because the companies included a provision allowing them to share users' Internet activities with third parties in their end user license agreements (EULAs), Vigilant was able to legally gather data from those Internet carriers and use it to craft reports for federal agencies. A Vigilant press release says that the organization tracks more than 250 million IP addresses a day and can "develop portfolios on any name, screen name or IP address."
They're tracking 250 million IP addresses a day, compiling dossiers, and then turning them over to federal agencies -- with the ability to link that information to "any name." As this June, 2010 article from the Examiner -- one of the very few ever written about the group -- put it:
Project Vigilant has been operating in near total secrecy for over a decade, monitoring potential domestic terrorist activity and tracking various criminal activities on the Web. In a series of exclusive interviews with some of the group's leaders, it's clear that the people doing this work are among the most sophisticated and experienced experts in today's rapidly moving world of Internet security.
In case you doubt the seriousness of this group, consider the list of its officials, which includes Mark Rasch, who headed the DOJ's Internet Crime Unit for 9 years; Kevin Manson, a retired Homeland Security official; George Johnson, who "develop[ed] secure tools for the exchange of sensitive information between federal agencies" for the Pentagon; Ira Winkler, a former NSA official; and Suzanne Gorman, former security chief of the New York Stock Exchange. These are people with extensive, sophisticated expertise in compiling highly invasive data about individuals' Internet activities, and more so -- given their background -- how to package it in a way that can be used by federal agencies.
Project Vigilant is but one manifestation of a booming and unaccountable industry: groups which collect vast amounts of highly informative data about American citizens -- particularly their Internet activities -- and then sell it or otherwise furnish it to the U.S. Government. A separate Examiner article described how Project Vigilant is funded by BBHC Global, a highly secretive "information security firm" -- see if you can find any information about it -- whose Managing Director, Steven Ruhe, drapes himself in the same creepy, vigilante-patriot language as the group which he funds:
In the fight against terror, the U.S needs all the help it can get, even if that assistance comes from unpaid volunteers. For the past 14 years, a significant volunteer group of U.S. citizens has been operating in near total secrecy to monitor and report illegal or potentially harmful activity on the Web.
Flying "under the radar" and carefully discouraging any press coverage that focused on the group, Project Vigilant has quietly operated in the eddies and whirlpools of Internet research, feeding tips and warnings to federal, state and military agencies. The group claims over 500 current members, although their names and identities are still mostly secret. Their members comprise some of the most knowledgeable experts in the field of information security today and include current employees of the U.S. government, law enforcement and the military. . . .
The group's collaboration with the U.S. Government is handled through another highly secure web portal which supports protected email, chat and other features.
Project Vigilant is funded by BBHC Global, an information security firm based in the Midwest, and private donations. Uber's boss is Steven Ruhe, the Managing Member of BBHC Global. "I've always been a small town guy with big dreams," said Ruhe who was born and raised in Nebraska and sells Amway products on the side. "This work is for a really good cause."
Project Vigilant is organized and run on a structure not unlike that of the military. Uber himself will serve only two more years in his "tour of duty" as the Project's Director and then another member will take his place.
"This is the most rewarding thing I've ever done in my life," said Uber. "I'm helping keep our country safer."
(http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/02/privacy/index.html - behind paywall)
Discussion
Glenn Greenwald:
"What's really going on here is that the ability to construct dossiers on citizens' Internet activities has increased dramatically over the last several years, as increasing parts of citizens' private lives take place online. Put another way -- and this isn't news -- online privacy has all but evaporated. Virtually every step anyone takes online -- from the websites they visit to the transactions they engage in -- are not only now stored and tracked by multiple companies, but are then compiled and made available to a wide variety of groups. As a Wall St. Journal article from this weekend documents, the original impetus for this comprehensive tracking was a commercial one: the more websites and advertisers know about you, the more they can make use of that knowledge, from auctioning you to various advertisers, selling the data about you, and catering messages and ads to your profile. As the ACLU's long-time privacy expert Chris Calabrese told me this morning, "virtually every step you take online is now tracked by numerous mechanisms and instantly processed."
But the emergence of a private market that sells this data to the Government (or, in the case of Project Vigilance, is funded in order to hand it over voluntarily) has eliminated those obstacles. As a result, the Government is able to circumvent the legal and logistical restrictions on maintaining vast dossiers on citizens, and is doing exactly that. While advertisers really only care about your online profile (IP address) in order to assess what you do and who you are, the Government wants your online activities linked to your actual name and other identifying information. As Calabrese put it: "it's becoming incredibly easy for these companies to link your IP information to who you really are, by, for example, tracing it to your Facebook page or other footprints you leave with your identifying information." As but one example, The Washington Post recently began automatically linking any visitors -- without their knowledge or consent -- to their logged-in Facebook page. The information turned over to the Government is now easily linkable -- and usually linked -- to the citizens' actual identity." (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/02/privacy/index.html - behind paywall)