Total Information Awareness: Down, But Not Out
from the watch-out dept
Thought that John Poindexter and his Total Information Awareness system were gone? Think again. Salon is reporting that, despite the Senate trying to freeze the TIA in its tracks, things may still be moving forward. They say it’s much more than the “research project” everyone kept describing. Now, it’s actually a working prototype, and other departments within the DoD are expressing more interest in it. The article quotes insiders who say that there is almost no concern whatsoever (despite lip service to the contrary) about individuals’ privacy rights in work being done on the TIA system. They go on to point out that as far as anyone can tell, DARPA has barely thought about privacy issues at all, holding a couple of meetings and putting out a single 26 page report (which isn’t even entirely about the TIA).
Comments on “Total Information Awareness: Down, But Not Out”
Is the Senate going to lose or something?
Does anyone think that TIA will be forcibly enacted while overriding congressional opposition? It sounds like a nice B-movie, but it won’t happen. The public outrage will be deafening, and no politician is going to say we should arrest a million Americans to suppress the opposition.
No, TIA will fade out of public debate and either die or become some obscure annex of the NSA. The NSA will outsource the dirty work to Canadian and British intelligence agencies, so they listen to Americans’ phone calls in exchange for the NSA listening to theirs.
TIA
Does anyone really think the government is competent enough to get something like this working at all?