Pentagon to retire the TALON domestic spy program in name only

Pentagon to remove the name of their controversial security database and transfer surveillance activities to the FBI

Tue Aug 21, 2007 3:00PM EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Tuesday it would close a controversial database tracking suspicious activity around U.S. military bases which critics complained had been used to spy on peaceful antiwar activists.

Officials decided the TALON program would end on September 17 not in response to public criticism but because the amount and quality of information being gathered had declined, the Pentagon said.

"The analytical value of it was pretty slim," said Army Col. Gary Keck, a Pentagon spokesman.

"The TALON database was a perfectly legal system, nobody ever said it wasn't, but it just was not meeting our needs any more," he told reporters.

Although the Pentagon insisted the move was not a response to criticism, a memo by the department's top intelligence official obtained by Reuters in April said the program should not be continued "particularly in light of its image in the Congress and the media."

Military and defense personnel will still report suspicious activities around military bases, the Pentagon said. But that information will go to a Federal Bureau of Investigation database until the Pentagon proposes a longer-term solution.

http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN2135960020070821?rpc=401&

How impressive. :puke:

All this NSA stuff is so "Cold War."

I personally didn't enjoy the feeling of the doomsday clock being 1 minute from midnight. I guess I get to enjoy that squirm in my spine again soon.