From the release:

The TIA internal oversight board will oversee and monitor the manner in which terrorist tracking tools are transitioned for real world use. This board will establish policies and procedures for use within DoD of the TIA-developed tools and will establish protocols for transferring these capabilities to entities outside DoD. A primary focus of the board will be to ensure that the TIA-developed tools to track terrorists will be used only in accordance with existing privacy protection laws and policies. The board, which is expected to hold its first meeting by the end of February 2003, will be composed of senior DoD officials.

The outside advisory board will be convened as a federal advisory committee and will comply with all the legal and regulatory requirements for such bodies. The committee will advise the Secretary of Defense on the range of policy and legal issues that are raised by the development and potential application of advanced technology to help identify terrorists before they act.

Critics have praised the creation of the two boards but caution that Congress still needs to maintain close watch and control over the project. “We’re talking about a program that would undermine the core American value of privacy,” said Katie Corrigan, legislative counsel at the Washington national office of the American Civil Liberties Union, which recently teamed up with conservative groups such as the Free Congress Foundation to oppose Poindexter’s program. The ACLU recently wrote a report entitled “Bigger Monster, Weaker Chains: The Growth of an American Surveillance Society “, in which they state “the United States is at risk of turning into a full-fledged surveillance society. The fact is, Orwells vision of “Big Brother” is now, for the first time, technologically possible.”

In a humorous twist, Poindexter himself became the target of data mining last December when online pranksters began publishing all of his publicly available personal data on such websites as cryptome and warblogging.