CEO Resigns in Protest from Groove Networks

Mitch Kapor, a civil libertarian, founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a co-founder of former Lotus Development Corporation, has resigned his position on the Board of Directors of Groove Networks, reportedly after he learned that Groove had sold some of its software to the U.S. Department of Defense for use in a controversial U.S. surveillance project. Groove Networks' collaborative software is being used by the Total Information Awareness Office (TIAA) of the Department of Defense for the development of a data mining system to help identify potential terrorists by their activity. TIAA is headed by former Reagan administration John Poindexter, a controversial figure in the Iran-Contra matter. Groove's software can reportedly sift through financial, telephone, travel and medical records to help identify a pattern of abnormal activities consistent with terrorist behavior patterns. Unfortunately, the identification system could also be used to sift through the private travel, financial, telephone and medical records of millions of law abiding, 'non-terrorist' U.S. citizens, as well, without their knowledge. Congress is reportedly troubled by the TIAA's activities, as last month it passed an amendment barring the data mining system from gathering private information on U.S. citizens without prior Congressional approval.

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