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Feds Open 'Total' Tech Spy System
Diesel Dave writes "A Wired article reports: 'On Wednesday, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will begin awarding contracts for the design and implementation of a Total Information Awareness (TIA) system...The Total Information Awareness program, with its ability to provide persistent storage of everything from credit card, to employment, to medical, to ISP records, is a recipe for civil liberties disaster unless there are provisions for citizens to find out who is looking at their records and to see and correct those records.' The foundation for the omnipotent National ID database has now been laid."
Sometime I want to be heard with my name, other times I'm quite happy to be very anonymous...
Just think about it, do you really want those horny 16 yearolds at the checkout stand to know who you are while you're picking up the tampons for your wife?
You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!
Microsoft's passport system has been around for years.
So DARPA is taking a page from Google's book. Does the winner get $10,000 in cash, a VIP visit to the Pentagon in Arlington, VA and the possibility of running their prize winning code on DARPA's supercomputers?
I've seen it in the 70's with the notion of a Corporate Data Base, in the 80's with Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) systems, and in the 90's with Data Warehouses. It's nice to think of a single source of information providing all the answers, but it inevitably turns out too expensive to build and impossible to keep current. I see no evidence that such a system would have prevented the attacks on 9/11. But some IT infrastructure companies are going to get rich on this boondoggle.
As a professor of mine in college once said; "Computers make great filing cabinets, but lousy guessers."
If the /. community objects to this, the solution is clear... we mount an open source bid for the contract, which should (as the product will be free as in beer) be guaranteed to win the contract on price grounds.
:-)
Then we just 'do a mozilla' and keep adding wonderful new features but never actually deliver the damn thing
problem solved!
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
It's one thing for such systems to exist in private hands, using information collected through noncoercive means.
It's another thing entirely for it to be not merely difficult but downright illegal to avoid them.
Remember folks, the only reason we don't live in an Orwellian nightmare world is actually because it isn't technologically feasible.
As soon as it's possible and practical, in the next few years, it will happen on a wide and broad scale. If it's unpopular, they'll simply not publicize its use. If a few innocents are harrased by it (activists, anarchists, pagans, atheists, and other similar unAmericans), you won't hear a word. If by some sheer coincidence it actually assists in finding a terrorist pre-crime, they still won't say a word.
And I'm sure they'll find a few other uses for it. I mean if you're commiting a crime, it's a crime, no matter what, so what's the problem?
(Hmm, Citizen #95235345 just bought a DVD-R unit and downloaded a copy of DeCSS. Set his Awareness Level to 15%, and send a copy of his Dossier to Media Control for further study. Excellent, we might yet meet our Enforcement quota this week!)
There are government agencies, especially law enforcement, whose existence is threatened by this person. They have full access to the complete records of this persons life: medical problems, personal purchases, friends, lovers (including unmarried ones), etc. To silence this person, they will have the ability to make any embarrassing information public (none of which may even have been illegal). Even if the person has the strength of character to withstand this, the persons message will be lost under the media coverage of the scandalous aspects of this person's life: his pr0n preferences, former friends who turned out to be bad guys, extramarital affairs, etc.
This type of this has serious implications for free speech. Even if you are a nobody who will never have anything important to say and who has nothing to hide anyway, there are people to have something to say and have the right to keep the private aspects of their lives private while saying it.
tato (and tato only)
This post is strictly opinion, including the spelling.
Before the *DIS*information starts flying fast and furious (doh, wait, it already has!) I recommend everyone read BAA 02-08, the request for proposals for technology that will be transitioned into the TIA system. Here is the link:
http://www.darpa.mil/iao/BAA02-08.pdf
This BAA describes exactly what RESEARCH DARPA is looking to fund (emphasis on research: DARPA is NOT a procurement agency, and DARPA is NOT an operational agency). They are not buying off-the-shelf systems, and they are not setting up systems to spy on people. There is even a component to this BAA regarding privacy-protecting technologies.
It is worth noting that many of the problems for which this BAA is looking for national-security-style solutions are problems common to many organizations, as well as fundamental computer-science questions. Not the malevolent stuff that Wired and others would have you think.
Lets see... what was the last major governemnt that:
Tracked information about all its citizens
Required you to carry federal identifiation whenever you left the house
Required "papers" for any sort of travel outside of your home town
And yet here in 2002, we as a nation seem to be jumping for joy that all these things are being talked about and implimented in our country. Yea, it's all supposedly for national defense, but Hitler started his reign by imposing all those rules and ideas for the good of the country. How far will we take it this time?
Why can't the Fed just look at the easy way out: stop imposing our will on other countries by military force. Just get out of the Middle East and let them fight it out amongst themselves. Problem solved.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
To paraphrase the AC:
The only people who are worried about these types of programs are the ones with something to hide
The fact that an AC said this deserves either a +1 Ironic or -1 Ignorant. Unfortunately you didn't include any sarcasm tags to help us decide.
No they aren't. Not on americans at least. Do your self a favor and pick up the book 'Body of Secrets'. It is a no bullshit account of what goes on at the NSA. It is amazingly well researched and will fill you in on the fact that the the NSA is prohibited on sying on Americans within America (if you are in another country that is a different matter). If you are sitting down watching Nascar in Nashville and Osama Bin Laden calls you on the phone, NSA procedure is to record that phone call and note that it was Bin Laden, but you are simply identified as 'American Citizen'. If a customer to the NSA, requests to know who 'American Citizen' is, and has due cause, the NSA will reveal it, but this is the extreme circumstance. Oh, and the good part is that politicans never get recorded at all :).
one other interesting fact, the NSA is exempted from any US law that does not specifically name the NSA....
Everyone should read Body of Secrets before claiming to know something about the NSA.
If this turns out half as bad as it looks, I'm all for a new American Revolution. Worked in 1776, I think it'd work now if we actually educated the public about this bullshit.
Go ahead and arrest me, Ascroft, you totalitarian son of a bitch, you'll have to do me like you did Padilla; have the military hold me in a brig without bringing charges, 'cause I a'int done a damn thing wrong. Or maybe I should just start looking around for another country. This country is great, but I'm starting to wonder whether the public at large is populated by morons or people too scared to come out of their bunkers. Freedom is something you have to want and want bad. It's incredibly delicate, and we're seeing it torn apart before our eyes. 1984? I don't think so. I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees. If America is populated by pussies, then just let me know and I'll find another place to live where they actually want their freedom. Sept 11 was an attack on our way of life. Judging by the way things have gone the last 11 months (patriot act, data mining, warrantless arrests, detention of American CITIZENS without a trial/lawyer/grand jury, etc) I'd say they kicked our asses. Cower in the dark if you like, but I will never call you a patriot. I was at the Statue of Liberty today, and it was still closed; you can't go inside. Why? The people of America are too scared to tell Bush to re-open it. What does it say when the people of this country are barred from entering our greatest symbol of freedom? What the hell does that say?
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
How does being an aethist make you unAmerican? I'd LOVE to hear your thoughts on this.
Read George H.W. Bush's thoughts; that's probably what the grandparent post was referring to.
Defensive, aren't you? Too defensive to note that the poster was attempting irony by subtly summoning the bogeyman of a right-wing Big Brother. Being an atheist surely is not unamerican, but neither is being religious, and in particular neither is being Christian. If you (and the poster you are replying to) had a more comprehensive picture of court rulings over the past 30 years, you would see that Christians have more to fear from undemocratic abuses of power than atheists or subscribers to other religions.
More people have DIED over religious wars than any political war..
From this comment alone, I'll peg you as a 19-21 year old, hot-headed undergrad who took two history classes, both taught by professors who advocate socialism, and you think you're being intellectual by stating that old canard with that kind of CAPITALIZED fervor, like you calculated it up yourself. In this you are hardly unique. You'll grow out of it.
Oh, and far more people have thrived in the propsperity of Western, Judeo-Christian societies than in any autocratically mandated atheist society.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
However, if you take the time to include the tens of millions butchered by prominent atheist Josef Stalin, and the tens of millions butchered by prominent atheist Mao, it turns out that atheists are responsible for so much more wholesale slaughter in the world's history that it's not even worth comparing to anything or anyone else.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.