WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 (Xinhuanet) -- U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld revealed on Thursday that civilians in the United States are under surveillance in a program to protect military personnel and bases.

    The "counter-surveillance" program, in line with the Defense Department's responsibility to protect U.S. forces, is aimed at preventing civilians gathering sensitive information and taking pictures of security installations, Rumsfeld said at the National Press Club.

    "To do that, you obviously end up scooping up information, whether it is names or films or whatever to protect your base, and that information then comes into the databank," he said.

    NBC News revealed in December that the Defense Department had established a database containing dozens of reports on anti-war activists or protests.

    Rumsfeld said the program will periodically purge the database,in order to get rid of the "massive data that we don't need and don't want and didn't intend to keep in the first place." Enditem