back to article Pentagon bins home-front threat database

The Pentagon moved yesterday to shut down a controversial military database used to record possible threats to the US services inside America. Reuters reports that officials gave a cutoff date of 17 September for the so-called Talon system. After this, defence personnel will still report suspicious activities around military …

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  1. Robert Grant

    TALON?

    Why would anyone give it such a threatening name? Call it FluffyBunnies or something, for goodness sake.

  2. JohnG

    That name is already in use...

    ... for the device they might want to use against those peacenik hippies:

    http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ground/talon.htm

    http://www.foster-miller.com/lemming.htm

    One would hope they might choose the SWAT/MP version with a TASER instead of the more threatening variant with an M16 or 50 calibre machine gun.

  3. Ted Treen

    There are threats and threats...

    I would have thought that a database of threats to the USA would have started with Bush, Rumsfeld inter alia...

  4. Tim Wesson

    Re: TALON?

    Fluffy Bunnies is no good. Jobs that involve power are no good if it's all responsibility. Power is appealing because it puts the powerful individual higher up in the pecking order. To this purpose, obscurity is no good.

    Fluffy Bunnies would only be sensible as a name if the power were really being used in the citizen's interest, or else the Pentagon was really a conspiracy against the citizen. In truth, it is simply a matter of those with power strutting their stuff. Genes make us dumb, as well as cunning.

  5. Alistair

    TALOFF

    Yet more proof (as if it were needed) that its far easier to spuriously identify a need for a software system, invest in it, install it and maintain it, than it is to deal effectively with percieved security threats.

  6. A. Merkin

    Yeah, but...

    If the government isn't tracking the protesters, how can they remove them from the voter registration rolls?

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Tidy

    Yes but where can I get a Pentagon bin ?

  8. Matt

    Oh, warm fuzzy names are more then just bunnies.

    They come in terms like "Social Security" (let's add another 10% tax, but let people think they're actually "buying" insurance for the future...).

    Or "Universal Healthcare" (let's force people to purchase services from private companies that give us nice, fat political donations).

    Or "Progressive" (well, calling ouselves Liberal after progressive programs like prohibition failed miserably and gave Progressivism a bad name isn't working so well anymore, so let's go back to it now that people have forgetten what a mishmash of policies it was the first time around...)

    Or "Conservative" when it's used by right winger who'll expand the breadth and depth of government -- the only difference being they get a less scrutiny in achieving the ends then the Liberals do because the name "conservative" has been more trustworthy lately then "liberal". Let's face it folks, Patrick Leahy isn't mad the Bush Administration is using the technology he championed to be installed to wire tap modern packet switched telephone networks -- he's pissed off it's a Republican and not a Democrat doing it.

    Matt

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