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Tuesday, July 29, 2003
YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK
Terrorist wagers:
All bets are off!
Pentagon abandons 'stupid' plan
to trade 'futures' on world
events
Posted: July 29, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern
� 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
Amid congressional opposition, the U.S. Defense Department has
abandoned an unusual program that would have allowed traders to bet on the
probability of future terrorist attacks.
"The Policy
Analysis Market" � which planned to buy and sell "futures" based on
the likelihood of a specific event � was the brainchild of the
department's Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, or DARPA, according
to news reports.
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., announced today the program's cancellation
shortly after Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle denounced it from the
Senate floor as "an incentive actually to commit acts of terrorism," the
Associated Press reported.
"This is just wrong," said Daschle, D-S.D.
The program offered bidders a chance to profit on the occurrence of
events such as a missile attack by North Korea, the overthrow of Jordan's
King Hussein and the assassination of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat,
the agency's website said.
Defense officials argued the market-based system provided a highly
accurate assessment of political and civil stability, economic health and
military disposition of Middle East countries, WBAL-TV in Baltimore
reported. Also, the system was designed to shield the identities of
traders, and access to their funds is protected.
The idea, reported ABC News, was to apply business market analysis to
create a Defense Department "early warning system to avoid surprise," a
DARPA statement said.
The Pentagon insists the technique has successfully predicted elections
and even box office receipts.
However, critics contended it would have allowed plotting terrorists to
profit from an attack � a terrorist version of insider trading � and to
make false bets to mislead authorities.
The idea is repugnant as well as wasteful, some Congress members
asserted yesterday.
"I think this is unbelievably stupid," Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., told
reporters. "That is a gentle thing to say about a program that is so
devoid of value."
Dorgan said it "combines the worst of all our values in my judgment.
It's a tragic waste of taxpayer money. It will be totally offensive to
almost everyone."
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said the "idea of a federal betting parlor on
atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and grotesque," WBAL reported.
"The bizarre plan we are describing today is a waste of taxpayer money
and it needs to stop immediately," he said. "The program's intent is
clear: the federal government is encouraging people to bet on and make
money from atrocities and terrorist attacks."
The senators said the Defense Department had requested $8 million for
the initiative in order to expand the program over the next two fiscal
years.
Wyden told the CNBC cable television network the Pentagon already has
spent $650,000 on the project.
CBS News said some security experts were skeptical of the program's
predictive power.
"The way we look at intelligence, we don't look at it as a horoscope,"
Mark Hall, spokesman for Air Security International, a Houston-based
intelligence consultant, told CBS. "We found that a good regional analyst
is ahead of these forecasting models anyway."
The Pentagon's DARPA unit also has faced criticism for its Terrorism
Information Awareness program, originally called Total Information
Awareness, a computerized surveillance program denounced by privacy
advocates.
John Poindexter, former President Reagan's national security adviser,
oversees the Policy Analysis Market as well as the TIA program in his role
as head of DARPA's Information Awareness Office.
The market program "fits into a larger pattern of odd, perhaps goofy,
DARPA projects that are innovative, but they also have all kinds of
problems or questions associated with them," said Steven Aftergood of the
Federation of American Scientists, according to CBS News.
"You don't want to punish or humiliate or scold people for having
unconventional ideas," Aftergood said. "On the other hand, you don't want
to go very far down a blind alley without a reasonable expectation of what
you are going to find there."
The Defense Department said registration was scheduled to begin Friday,
with trading commencing Sept. 1.
