Military Domestic Spying

Domestic Military Counterintelligence:

Pajamas Media has a roundup on blogger reaction to this MSNBC story on the domestic counterintelligence function of the US military. Longtime readers of Grim's Hall remember discussing this last year, when the excellent Secrecy News had a piece on USNORTHCOM's Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA).

The directive establishing CIFA is here, by the way. Jack Lewis is right: you may not like it, but it's perfectly legal.

It's absolutely reasonable to be concerned about this -- as long as the concerns recognize the necessity of Counterintelligence work in the post-9/11 world. I admire and trust the officers of the US military I've met and worked with over the years. Nevertheless, there is a real problem with domestic spying by any government agency: not privacy, but secrecy. Just as false information can get in your credit report, false information can get into any secret CI records about you. If you don't know what they say, you may not know to correct the false impression it creates about you. Just as you could end up not getting a loan or a job because of a falsehood in your credit report, even one created by identity theft, you could end up with serious problems created by a secret CI report about you.

MSNBC quotes people calling for a review process. What there needs to be is a provision of access to data, so that you can review your record and correct any misinformation it may contain. This must obviously go through a process similar to FOIA, so that data collection techniques and agents are not compromised. Still -- and I in no way mean to single out the military, who are surely more trustworthy for these purposes than most government agencies because of their embedded culture of honor -- we're talking about information that can have an impact on your life. You ought to be able to know what's been said about you, and have a forum for correcting it.