Funding for TIA All But Dead

Shackleford writes "Wired has an article saying that the Terrorism Information Awareness program, which would troll Americans' personal records to find terrorists before they strike, may soon face the same fate Congress meted out to John Ashcroft in his attempt to create a corps of volunteer domestic spies: death by legislation. The Senate's $368 billion version of the 2004 defense appropriations bill, released from committee to the full Senate on Wednesday, contains a provision that would deny all funds to, and thus would effectively kill, the Terrorism Information Awareness program, formerly known as Total Information Awareness. TIA's projected budget for 2004 is $169 million."

Comments

Of course, they would never ...

[burgburgburg]

go around the intent of Congress and use "black" funds to support widespread domestic spying. That would be wrong.

I'm sleeping easier now.

Dead but not forgotten

[Fux the Pengiun]

Don't worry, it'll be back. Check the article:

The Senate bill's language is simple but comprehensive: "No funds appropriated or otherwise made available to the Department of Defense ... or to any other department, agency or element of the Federal Government, may be obligated or expended on research and development on the Terrorism Information Awareness program."

The program just got bad press is all, as many alarmists who shrieked loudly about "civil liberties" shouted down the program's supporters. The same work will still be done, just by different departments under a different name. It says "no funding will go to the TIA", but it doesn't say the essence of the TIA won't live on in another agency's budget. I don't think it's entirely a bad thing either...just so long as they don't go too far. I don't care if they want to see my credit history, just not my Safeway preferred customer card spending habits. That shit is sacred.

Re:Dead but not forgotten

[HBI]

Actually, consider this program as a lightning rod. With all the vitriol spewed in Poindexter's direction, wonder what else slipped in under the radar.

It's a move worthy of say, a Karl Rove, don't you think?

Ashcroft not completely the bad guy here.

[PHAEDRU5]

Think about it: he's got a threat out there with a demonstrated ability to perform mass killings, and he'd prefer not to die in a fireball of aviation fuel. Neither would his boss, his boss' replacement, nor any of his immediate colleagues.

Meanwhile, his former colleagues are hounding him because he still doesn't really have a good answer on who mailed the anthrax.

If I ever saw a man grasping for straws, Ashcroft's that man. I think I understand where he's been coming from in all this (ever been hounded by QA and PHBs?), and I feel for him.

Even so, I'm glad TIA is dead.

Re:Ashcroft not completely the bad guy here.

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Think about it: he's got a threat out there with a demonstrated ability to perform mass killings, and he'd prefer not to die in a fireball of aviation fuel. Neither would his boss, his boss' replacement, nor any of his immediate colleagues.

Utterly irrelevant. You can only do the 9/11 trick once. After that, hijacking a plane becomes suicide by violent business executive. More to the point, none of this TIA crap would help catch terrorists. What would have worked is if we listned to the warning signs (flight school with concerns about a student who only needs to know how to steer planes, killing an FBI investigation because it got too close to the Saudi royal family) and, perhaps, stop funding these guys ourselves (both Saddam and OBL were our buddies back in the 80's. Of course we could also stop being so belligerent with the rest of the world, but that'll never happen with Bush the lesser in office.

Re:Ashcroft not completely the bad guy here.

[XSforMe]

AC troll wrote:

but it just wouldn't work.
Well, why not try it? Most of the 19th century the U.S. kept to itself. Guess how many 9/11's it had to withstand.

Surprise, some countries/people would still detest the USA.
That is a reasuring reason, glad you are around with your crystal ball to tell us this things.

Do you really think al-Qaeda would stop planning attacks if we pulled out of the Mid-East?
Try pull out of Mid-East and stop funding Israel. That should work.

Of course not, the fundamentalists would just continue their brutal ways while having the freedom to attack the USA at will.
Then again, you might be right... get that TIA on the road, spy on everybody, think of the rest of the world as terrorist, bomb the hell out of inocent countries, finance any/all subversive groups of any government you dislike. I am sure the rest of the world loves to be addressed in that fashion.

Looks like 1984...

[robogun]

... has been put off for a little while. But it will come. Sorry, guys, but that's just the nature of information tech. The gov't is not needed for this.

Once info is collected, it can be collected, archived, sold under the table or social-engineered out of you or your bank's representative.

Then, it is simple a matter of storage. Even now, the credit records of all consumers in the United States can be fit onto a single hard disk (assume a 200mb disk, 200 million consumers, and 1000 bytes per record).

Not much can be done about that, except a Butlerian Jihad.

interesting

[SubtleNuance]

Interesting that "Funding for TIA All But Dead" is the tag on a $169 MILLION budget. Really, I'd say that $400 was the long shot, and the $169 was the "awww shucks, i guess we'll be real thrifty and carefull with this new project and only spend $170 Million". The TIA project is sadly offensive in a USA where the whole shebang is getting budgeted on BORROWED money. Either people have to sit up and decide to pay their taxes for this jibberish or they need to ease up on the Orwellian Nightmare Funding Project... aka TIA.

Maybe they can put this TIA thing back a year and do something about the crumbling inner-city-Detroit, or poor without food/healthcare, or some-other-more-worthy-project.

Really, even with that said, who really thinks that the DoD/CIA/NSA/FBI couldnt come up with the money (even in *addition* to what they spend now) to fund such a project. Dont think just because they are *reporting* to be less serious about it; "hey look - were cutting its funding - its not a priority (since you were so offended..)", this Stasi-Like crap is only gonna get more severe as your country slips into a deeper self-induced paranoia/schitzophrenia... and Bush is driving the bus.

Re:The project will just use hidden funding.

[Zathrus]

The TIA is a rather high-profile project that needs some access to some pretty heavily watched data sources. You could, in theory, still do all of it in the black, but you're going to need a ton of people to be in on it. And unlike Iran-Contra, this time those people are in country.

That's what it would be, after all... a whole new Iran-Contra scandal, but with much more clear (il)legalities. And while Ashcroft would certainly be first in line, it's questionable that Bush would be able to insulate himself from an illegally funded project that he supported.

It's much more likely that it'll die and be resurrected again in a couple years under a different name.

But thank you for the paranoia all the same.

Re:well...

[BrynM]

Steps to funding Black Ops
1. Start Super-Classified Government Project
2. ????
3. Profit!
4. Fund Super-Classified Government Project with step 3