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Potomac President Writes to 9/11 Commission - Urges GUARDIAN Approach 29 April, 2004 News Release Contact: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Potomac President Writes to 9/11 Commission - Urges GUARDIAN Approach Arlington, Va. —On April 27, 2004, Dr. Dennis McBride, President of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, sent a letter to members of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States informing them of the work that is being conducted on Project GUARDIAN by the Institute. The project is designed to provide a forum for discussion relating to privacy issues and the use of new information technologies in the War on Terrorism. Since November 2002, GUARDIAN has sponsored almost a dozen seminars and produced several papers exploring the tension between civil liberties and more efficient information acquisition, analysis and dissemination. In June 2003, and based on its preliminary study and analysis, the Institute proposed a new U.S. policy for the management of terrorist threat related information. The purpose of Dr. McBride’s letter was to encourage the commissioners to consider the proposal as a solution to the intelligence failures that they have identified. The essentials of the Potomac proposal are that: The government be required to identify, with some reasonable specificity, current categories of information it determines to be relevant to the current terrorist threat; Together, these defined categories of information would be called “Terrorist Threat Information,” a new term; Categories that included “U.S. Person” information would be protected by anonymous coding, required at “first intake” of the data; “Terrorist Threat Information” would be “red teamed”, to develop “Current Threat Models,” which would periodically reviewed and approved at high level; “Terrorist Threat Information,” as pertaining to “Current Threat Models” would be shared with Federal, state and local departments, agencies, and officials that were specifically identified and approved in advance; Release of “U.S. Person” related information would be subject to specific approvals; and, The entire management and operational structure for “Terrorist Threat Information,” especially that related to “U.S. Person” information, would be subject to strict internal Executive Department and Congressional reporting and oversight. In sum, the Project GUARDIAN proposal offers an objective way to improve the acquisition of information critical to stopping terrorists, then to integrate all information relevant to the threat for analysis, and finally to distribute that analysis to those on the front lines against terrorism. A record of Project GUARDIAN’s events and publications as well as the letters to the 9/11 Commission are available on its website, available at Project Guardian News . ______________________________________________________________________________________ The Potomac Institute for Policy Studies is an independent, 501(c)(3), not-for-profit public policy research institute, and is dedicated to the development and implementation of policies that advocate and manage the increasing role of science and technology in our evolving world. The Potomac Institute fiercely maintains objectivity and credibility, remaining independent of any federal or state agency, and owing no special allegiance to any single political party or private concern. ### |
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