Pentagon Soft-Pedals Total Information Awareness

PizzaFace writes "Congress was concerned that the Pentagon's 'Total Information Awareness' program would invade citizens' privacy, so it gave the program the red light until the Pentagon addressed Congress's privacy concerns. DARPA, the Pentagon technology agency that brought us the Internet in more innocent times, showed its Total Marketing Awareness by renaming the TIA program, 'Terrorism Information Awareness.' The gist of its report seems to be that data may be collected from everyone, but it will only be used against evildoers. You can read DARPA's report and a background story from the Washington Post."

Comments

Re:Only used against 'terrorists'

[fishbert42]

'You're a terrorist' in the US is starting to carry the same weight as 'You're a Jew' in Nazi Germany.

Or, my personal favorite:
"You're a Communist," in the McCarthy era.

Spain - an example of the dangers of this stuff...

[pubjames]

Many of you will probably be aware that in Spain there is a terrorist group called "ETA", that wants the Basque country (a bit in the North-West of Spain) to be independant. They are terrorists, no question, and they should be stopped. However, the current president of Spain (Aznar) hates that any of the regions of Spain wants independence, and is tending to brand anyone who wants independence as supporting terrorism. Political parties are being banned if they have members which are on a list of (several hundred) individuals which the state has decided are supporting terrorism. This means that practically any political party that is pro-independance for the Basque country is now banned. I believe this is obviously a real blow for democracy in Spain, and highlights the fact that a few terrorists can reduce the freedoms of a huge number of people if the government reacts in the wrong way.

Just my thoughts.

Government abuse of a database? Never.

[Bendy Chief]

For all you doubters out there, here's flagrant abuse, in addition to all the other links people have already submitted, of government databases. And these ones aren't anywhere near as juicy as TIA!

State Monitors War Protesters

LifeLog

[spot35]

Darpa are also soliciting proposals for a comprehensive, searchable database of individual human lives encompassing every communication, encounter, transaction and even 'feeling' generated by a lifetime of social interaction. This article on the register describes it.

Psychology of surveillance

[Garry Anderson]

I have posted on the subject of surveillance many times before. Here is an extract regarding the psychological aspect. This particular part was wrote by another and did a better job of explaining than I could:

"Foucault focused on Bentham's prison model, or the Penopticon as Bentham called it - which literally means, that which sees all. The Penopticon prison, which was popular in the early nineteenth century, was designed to allow guards to see their prisons, but not allow prisoners to see guards. The building was circular, with prisoner's cells lining the outer diameter, and in the center of the circle was a large, central observational tower. At any given time, guards could be looking down into each prisoner's cells - and thereby monitor potentially unmoral behavior - but carefully-placed blinds prevented prisoners from seeing the guards, thereby leaving them to wonder if they were being monitored at any given moment. It was Bentham's belief that the "gaze" of the Panopticon would force prisoners to behave morally. Like the all-seeing eye of God, they would feel shame at their wicked ways. In effect, the coercive nature of the Panopticon was built into its very structure."

Full text is here and also on my personal website.

Re:We're almost all Native Americans

[Trurl's Machine]

You are a member of a peaceful meeting. Someone (not you, not your friend, not a member of organization you endorse, not anyone you even know) throws a bomb. You are arrested and sentenced to death for "conspiracy with unknown person". Would you call this justice? And that is the essence of the Haymarket trial. Nobody knows who threw the bomb, and no liaisons were proven for the hanged persons. They just stood there, that was their only guilt.

Suspected Terrorist

[nycsubway]

You could also add to that list 'suspected terrorist'.

When the Patriot Act was enacted after Sept 11, 2001, it included a provision to allow US companies to discontinue services with a suspected terrorist. At my company, a large anonymous insurance company, we are being asked (in lieu of $10,000,000 fines) to compare every claimant, vendor, and any name we come across to a database of suspected terrorists provided by the Treasury Department.

If the name matches, we are to withhold payment of the claim until we mail a form to the Treasury Dept, and they investigate the suspected terrorist.

So, if a person is injured on the job, is out of work, and wants to collect workers compensation from his employer's insurance company, he wont be able to if he has the same name as someone on the Treasury Dept's list. So, he wont be able to work because he's injured, and he wont be able to collect any insurance. Where's he going to get money to live on while the Treasury dept investigates?

Needless to say, I was appauled that we had to program these features into our claim system.

More to the point: Washington Post article

[dachshund]

Today's Washington Post has an article on the various ways the Justice Department has applied terrorism laws to non-terrorism-related cases.

The Justice Department has used many of the anti-terrorism powers granted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to pursue defendants for crimes unrelated to terrorism, including drug violations, credit card fraud and bank theft, according to a government accounting released yesterday.

US already buys non-US citizens' personal data

[dogfart]

See this article and this one in the UK Guardian.

Quoting one:

US government purchasing documents show that the company, ChoicePoint, received at least $11m (£6.86m) from the department of justice last year to supply data - mainly on Latin Americans - that included names and addresses, occupations, dates of birth, passport numbers and "physical description". Even tax records and blood groups are reportedly included.

Nicaraguan police have raided two offices suspected of providing the information. The revelations threaten to shatter public trust in electoral institutions, especially in Mexico, where the government has begun an investigation.

The controversy is not the first to engulf ChoicePoint. The company's subsidiary, Database Technologies, was responsible for bungling an overhaul of Florida's voter registration records, with the result that thousands of people, disproportionately black, were disenfranchised in the 2000 election. Had they been able to vote, they might have swung the state, and thus the presidency, for Al Gore, who lost in Florida by a few hundred votes.

Oddly, this has received absolutely no coverage in the US media.