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

Long Road Ahead

[dtolton]

At least they are putting some strong language into this version of
the bill "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."

If the full senate doesn't approve this bill, the entire issue is
pretty much stillborn. Assuming they approve it though, there are
still several more steps for it to go through.

The main concern at this point is what happens when the bill goes to
committee. This process has always held concerns for me, but it
worries me that whether or not the defunding stays in the bill or not
is so dependant on one person. "The defunding has a chance of
surviving committee " Schwartz says "If Stevens is behind it, then it
almost certainly will happen.". I would have felt more comfortable if
he had said "It will almost certainly succeed."

Let's just hope he's behind defunding it. Removing the defunding
would completely remove the teeth from this bill IMO.

I also didn't see any comments from President Bush. As I understand
it, he is supportive of the TIA. Will he sign a bill that is going to
kill one of his pet projects? Again, let's hope so.

There are still a lot of steps for this bill to go through before it
becomes law. Progress is being made, but let your senator know that
you are against TIA, and maybe this bill will make it.

Info ...

[Arthaed]

An Executive Summary of TIA released by DARPA is available here. An explanation and overview of TIA, again by DARPA, can be found here.

well...

[ed.han]

except i have one question: what if they simply rename the darned thing? it's only $169 million: in beltway terms, this isn't a whole lot of money.

what worries me is that this could sneak into some other omnibus legislation through a rider under a different and more innocuous name, under a last-minute change to another bill before congress.

i fear this may become a senatorial shell-game.

ed

Re:well...

[Monkelectric]

How funding works ...

You don't need to worry about what congress approves, you need to worry about what congress doesn't know about.

The top level super secret shit is called "black projects". Funding for black projects doesn't come through washington, and isn't controlled by congress. Nobody knows *where* the funding for a black projects come from, but there is a ton of it. I have a few friends who work on them, and have interviewed for jobs at places that do black projects (which is how I became aware of them). So my answer to you is, you don't need to be worried about things congress funds, because congress doesn't even know about the good stuff.

Re:well...

[TopShelf]

Even sneakier, development on this could be pursued by a private agency, betting on the commercial prospects once it has been proven out.

Imagine the value of a centralized database that gathers together just public information about people, let alone private. Basically, it would become an automated mini-private eye service, which could mined for all sorts of useful information.

Just because this might not survive the Congress doesn't mean the idea won't be pursued...

Re:well...

[wik]

They already renamed it once from Total Information Awareness to Terrorism Information Awareness:

http://www.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/

Re:well...

[2short]

"The top level super secret shit is called 'black projects'".

People call various levels of secret things "black projects", particularly in the movies. I'm willing to bet that "top level super secret shit" is called a variety of things, and you don't know any of them.

"Funding for black projects doesn't come through washington, and isn't controlled by congress."

Then it doesn't come from tax dollars, and I don't care.

"Nobody knows *where* the funding for a black projects come from, but there is a ton of it."

Maybe it comes from magic elves! Of course someone knows where it comes from. Several someones in congress know where it comes from because they approve it. Just because they don't tell you doesn't mean they don't know. And while it may be officially secret how much is spent on various secret projects, it's not exactly hard to figure out the general outlines. For example, a significant chunk of secret spending is buried in the Air Force budget. (The Air Force buys a bunch of really expensive things, frequently with perfectly good reasons to be quiet about them, so confusing the issue of just how much really expensive stuff they bought is not too hard.)

Re:well...

[Slime-dogg]

There is a provision in the DoD funding specifically for black ops. Senate knows that there *is* money going into them, although they all know that there is no way that they will know what the money is spent on. For all we know, TIA has been a thriving force since 1980.

All money for government goes through the house, regardless of what people may think. The military / CIA / NSA need to request funds from congress in order to do their operations. These funds end up looking like "Monkey Wrench" and "Toilet Seat," because these are good non-descriptive words that act as substitutes.

The wording of the bill is interesting, however, since it doesn't specify what can get the money, rather is specifies what cannot get the money. This way, congress can limit what the intelligence department can do with the money, without them actually knowing what they really are doing.

Re:well...

[Qzukk]

Then it doesn't come from tax dollars, and I don't care.

Well no, it does come from tax dollars. Do you think that congress takes the time to see how the money is actually spent after it allocates it? Does congress know that Ashcroft's office isn't paying out "salary" to employees it doesn't actually have? I wouldn't be suprised if after congress "kills" TIA by not funding it, that Ashcroft's office suddenly finds itself with a few new employees, like "Thomas I. Anglemeyer" and "Theresa I. Allman". I'm sure they're even better at making up fake names than I am. And if they can't make up enough names, they'll suddenly need to order new "$500" toilet seats and hammers.

The fact is, if you're a conspiracy nut, nothing the government will do will convince you that TIA is gone. If you're not a conspiracy nut, why are you reading this, since to you, TIA was never a problem in the first place?

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

Great

[mao che minh]

It looks like the terrorists won, all because a few million Americans didn't want some new shadowy government agency perusing their most confidential records. How un-American.

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?

Re:Dead but not forgotten

[KU_Fletch]

The program just got bad press is all, as many alarmists who shrieked loudly about "civil liberties" shouted down the program's supporters

Yeah, how dare we want our things like privacy. Next thing you know we'll want to be able to say or write something without big brother flagging us as a terrorist. Where will the insanity stop!!!??

Re:Dead but not forgotten

[elmegil]

That's an interesting point. We were all wondering why they'd use such an obviously Illuminati inspired logo, but it would make sense for them to go "over the top" with something and someone specifically as a feint, with the real nasties coming in elsewhere.

I volunteer

[Timesprout]

To monitor posts on /. for a small portion (1-2%) of that $368 billion

The project will just use hidden funding.

[Futurepower(R)]

Denying funding does not mean there is no money for a project. It simply means that the project will use hidden funding. The U.S. government has established that it does not need to tell its citizens how the citizen's money is spent.

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.

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.

Nervous Senators?

[creative_name]

Hmmm...maybe the Senators were all nervous that a lot of them would be exposed for their own personal "un-American" activities. Ahha! I figured it out!!

Why is there a black car in front of my house...

Re:Nervous Senators?

[tc]

What "un-American" activities are you referring to? The thing that the Republicans seemed to get their panties in the biggest knot about Clinton was his lying about getting a blow-job from an intern. I guess that's somehow considered a more serious matter than, for example, lying to the public about the evidence for taking the country to war?

Re:Nervous Senators?

[geekee]

"lying to the public about the evidence for taking the country to war."

Isn't there a saying that goes, don't attribute to malice that which can easily be explained by stupidity (this is GW Bush after all). Just because they're wrong, doesn't mean they lied.

Re:Nervous Senators?

[geekee]

Actually, my poorly worded point is that sometimes people are simply wrong. Even the French did not say there were no WMD in Iraq. There were various opinions about what Iraq probably had. Most evidence was to the effect of, "they had such and such chemicals, but can't account for what happended to them." Saying now that there are no WMD in Iraq does not automatically mean that the US and Britian lied about it. To impeach a president, you need to present proof that he lied about the evidence. I'm all for the Democrats investigating the issue. I just get annoyed with people condemning the president without any proof.

Re:Nervous Senators?

[gmajor]

There is absolutely no evidence that Bush knowingly told a lie about weapons of mass destruction. He used information from the same source that Bill Clinton used when he launched a strike on Iraq and Sudan in the late 90's!

If we're going to nail Bush to the cross, we might as well place Clinton to his right - he ordered a strike on a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan! Can you believe it, a place that makes medicine to save people was bombed at Clinton's behest? But Clinton also had faulty intelligence.

We need to strengthen our foreign intelligence capabilities in a meaningful way. The problem is not in the White House, and it's not political, but much worse at its root.

Re:Nervous Senators?

[gmajor]

Bill Clinton used faulty intelligence, in the same way GWB used faulty intelligence. These documents were not forged by Americans (as far as we can tell), and the Brits refuse to tell where they got it from (even to the Americans), except to say it came from a third party country.

heh

[D0wnsp0ut]

<sarcasm>What a shame. I was looking forward to having an identity chip embedded into my skin to act as my credit card, driver's license, official government identity, travel pass, etc.</sarcasm>

The more I watch "The Running Man" the more I realize how close we are to living in that kind of society.

John Ashcroft

[Lord Omlette]

Has he had a single good idea?

No seriously, the blurb says this is his second massive failure. What has he succeeded in? (other than the Patriot Act)

Re:John Ashcroft

[(startx)]

Absolutely nothing. Why do you think he was free to be appointed to the position in the first place? We (the citizens of Missouri) elected a dead man, rather than give Ashcroft another term in the Senate.

Dead or just hibernating?

[PostConsumerRecycled]

I am glad to hear that it will be effectively dead for this budget year, but what happens next year? Is the program still on the books just awaiting funding to spring up on us.

I'm not really sure how the entire process works, but I wont really feel confident that TIA is dead until it is officially killed, as opposed to simply not funded.

The TIA subjected to Slashdot mods

[Qinopio]

the Terrorism Information Awareness program, which would troll Americans' personal records

(this government has been rated -1, Troll)

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:interesting

[Politburo]

who really thinks that the DoD/CIA/NSA/FBI couldnt come up with the money

That's just it. For the most part, they can't do things like this because spending is allocated by Congress. Money isn't just thrown out as "400$ million for FBI" and that's it. The expenditures are broken down, and aside from some DoD/Military spending, mostly public. Note that Congress still maintains oversight of this spending, it is just not public, for security reasons. This is how many leaks about the F-117 and B-2 projects came out; through Congressional offices that had oversight on the project.

The Federal Budget is a law passed by Congress every year. Agencies cannot just reallocate the money as they see fit. This "Power of the Purse" is probably the greatest power that the Congress currently has. It has used this power to enact a national drinking age, by witholding highway funds to states that don't comply. I believe it was also used recently against states with medicinal marijuana laws, but could not find an article confirming this.

The people suggesting that this program will just "reappear" are misguided, not "insightful". No agency would attempt to piss off Congress like that. The TIA is dead for FY2004, assuming the bill passes unmodified. Whether it stays dead will remain to be seen.

Re:name change?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's propose some new names!

Totalitarian Information Awareness!

Who can beat that?

The TIA is dead, Long live the TIA

[Rares Marian]

It will be funded under plan B. The one where they remember to put the clause, "It's for the children."

OF COURSE!

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

Yes, this is true. No money "on the books." A perfect "end".

But do you really think TIA will really end? The project will simply go, as they call it, "Dark". When the F-117 was being made, in a project called, I believe, "Deep Blue" do you think money that was on the books was used? No. TIA will "die" in the public, because the project is going dark. End of story. The website will remain the scrappy little inocent bits of HTML it is today, meanwhile under a lake somewhere will be a cluster of computers that are running TIA at full speed.

If only this concept scaled better.....

[Rahga]

I remember something Ted Kennedy said a while back in committee, about "obsolete" ideas in the constitution about indivudals witholding taxes so that stuff like the Army couldn't operate without funding. Quote, "That stuff will never happen here in America". IMHO, he's not ultimately correct about this point, but the motivation in making it is pretty strong.

I really can't go any further without trolling like 95% of these other posts are. I'm kinda really sick about political stories in /., aren't you?

Re:name change?

[jobugeek]

How about Thanks In Advance....for removing all your civil liberties. See, they don't even need to change the letters.

Perhaps ...

[DogIsMyCoprocessor]

a better choice of words than "troll" would be "attempt to data mine". From "troll" I get a picture of the government anonymously inflaming me by mocking my spending habits.

probably obsolete already anyway...

[Connie_Lingus]

Come on, now, how hard is most of the information that was supposed to be mined for TIA that hard to get anyway?? For $35US you can look in the yellow pages (or, of course, log into a web site), punch in some data, and get a background check of anyone anyway. This includes

1. Credit statements
2. Job histories
3. Criminal records.
4. Tax records. ...and so on. Corporations wanting to know everything about employees have already created the tools to mine our personal information anyway...do you really thing the gov't can't?

Just because the funding is gone, do you really thing the gov't has given up on this? Bad press killed this "initiative" long before this Congress did...but don't worry, they have wizened up. Next time they just won't mention to us that they are doing it...

Re:It's not dying,

[Rahga]

"Doesn't mean the government can't spy on them, it simply means they can't spy on them openly. Nothing has changed, TIA will continue. I'm living happily in Canada, thank God."

I agree 100%. Down here in America, individuals have to pay good, hard money to treat mental illnesses like paranoia. At least Canada has those glorious socialized medicine programs.

John Poindexter does his own funding

[babykong]

TIA is run by John Poindexter who was involved in Iran Contra. Iran Contra was a method of bypassing the need to use congressional funding for the Contras by selling arms to Iran and using those funds to do the Job.

These people can generate their own funds, possibly by selling some of the valuable information they collect to various marketing organizations. With the death of investigative reporting, who is going to catch them this time?

Re:John Poindexter does his own funding

[stanwirth]

Yah. True. And if you read The Tower Report on Iran Contra, you'd know that it was the IBM mainframe that caught them out in the end, not investigative journalists.

Basically they were hoisted by their own petard (but apparently not dropped hard enough afterwards). They had an early email system that (wow!) kept backups of everything, including things that they'd thought they'd deleted. So what was so incriminating? The email discussion between JP and other White House Staff concerning how various lies might go over with the public regarding the Iran Contra scandal as it unfolded -- how the story might be changed, how they might spin various half- truths.

The devil is in the details: you can't read the Tower Report without reading the footnotes, because this is where the real story is: how they were undone by their own words, when they thought everything they wrote could be deleted and or otherwise kept secret.

TIA profiling comes a little bit too close to Minority Report's FutureCrime and 1984's ThoughtCrime for comfort.

I think I can fill in this blank.

[Dr Reducto]

"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:" Im pretty sure the end of this reads Moderation, since they even say they are trolling.

Imagine...

[Schezar]

You made me think...

Imagine (HYPOTHETICALLY!) if the the US Government actually -had- orchestrated 9/11 (or knew about it and allowed it to happen) as part of a larger scheme.

Now imagine if the public at large found out. If there were undeniable proof.

What would happen? How would middle-class America react? That would be the ultimate test of the unity of the American people. Would they actually -do- something about it? Or would the spin-doctors win?

If only there were a World-Sim(tm) I could use to watch something like that unfold.

I will mourn it deeply...

[Stephen Samuel]

.... but first I must go dance on it's grave.

Poorman's TIA

[BelugaParty]

TIA announced the 169 million dollar budget will pay for exactly one laptop and a year of minimum wage pay to an employee who will search for keywords on google.

I dunno about you..

[Rinikusu]

But has anyone considered selling Linux to those guys? Considering that most of the "information mining" they will be doing could be done more efficiently and faster by automating it, consider:
Cheap, commodity x86 Beowulf clusters (see google)
Free OS (consider a giant community to provide your organization with bug-fixes for your main OS and tools)
OpenSource tools and OS (easier to modify for your own nefarious deeds)
etc
From my shoes, 169 million would buy one hell of a beowulf cluster, several admins, and a nice group of software developers to write and modify the programs needed. Not to mention that they could earmark parts of that money to fund grants for academically interesting projects that could help further the technology used by the TIA. Hell, Be, Inc survived on the equivalent of 50 million bucks for several years and they managed to crank out a really nice OS.

about Congress

[bersl2]

The great thing about Congress is when they "understand" the issues in our favor. I'm so very glad they and their staffs are doing their homework.

-0.5, Shades of Troll

TIA is more smoke and mirrors

[burgburgburg]

Like the Patriot Act, Leave No Child Behind and Clear Skies initiatives, the best way of figuring out what a Bush effort is NOT about is to pay attention to the name. The "Terrorism" component is an attempt to bludgeon critics of this sick effort. It would do nothing to prevent terrorism. That was never the point. Bush doesn't care that we're less safe then we were. If he did, he'd fund security for our ports, nuclear facilities, water processing plants, etc. But that would interfere with tax cuts, tax cuts and ...oh, yeah, almost forgot, tax cuts.

Re:TIA is more smoke and mirrors

[jazman_777]

Like the Patriot Act, Leave No Child Behind and Clear Skies initiatives, the best way of figuring out what a Bush effort is NOT about is to pay attention to the name.

You're gettin' there. Also: most government secrecy is mainly to prevent embarrassment. Also: most of these efforts are to protect the _state_, not us. Also: most of these efforts are to expand the state at our expense.

Folks, these so-called "conservatives" really believe in nothing that is traditionally conservative. Oh, sure, Bush pops into a church during campaign time and says "Jesus" and the religious right just rolls over. But these guys aren't interested in conservin' much of anything.

PS. Ever wonder why "conservatives" and the conservation movement are polar opposites? You'd think that conservatives would gravitate to conservation.

Re:TIA is more smoke and mirrors

[gmajor]

Let's not forget that Democratic presidential candidate Bob Graham was the primary author of the PATRIOT Act. He wrote the intelligence sections of it, the kind that deal with information sharing between government agencies and such.

If we're going to blame politicians, don't forget those crazy Democrats. Oh, I forgot - it's only en vogue to criticize Bush.

Canned on paper, but funded anyways?

[Lead Butthead]

What I fear is that the project would be funded through other black box line items...

"You don't really believe they paid thousands of dollars for a toilet seat do you?"

It was just software, code in cyberspace...

[macshune]

"Everyone thought the TIA was just another Big Brother wetdream, until the machines came. TIA became self-aware on July 27th, 2006. Within one hour, every American had a terrible credit rating and 16 orders of penis enlargment pills on the way to their homes. Panic ensued. The next day, utilzing the power of that spyware program in Kazaa, TIA appropriated millions of computer do to one thing: hack the U.S. millitary. Within 48 hours, TIA changed its name to SkyNet after trolling on the imdb for a more suitable name. I immediately logged onto slashdot and told everyone what I knew. But only the trolls were left. Then I realized I came to slashdot not to warn people, but to survive."

stop using 911

[asscroft]

I'd like to go one day without hearing someone use 911 to justify some sort of crazy bullshit that never would be allowed otherwise.

"I'm sorry, but since 911 we just can't play by the same rules, therefore I'm going to have to rape your mom. If you don't let me you're un-American and the terrorists will win. You DO NOT want to go to guantanamo, do you? Good. Get the rope, please"

comeoff it. Meanwhile, anyone who dares question our response to 911 or any of these decisions "justified" by 911 is "disgracing the memories of the victims and insulting their families and all patriots of america"

how nice, you have it both ways.

well, in tribute to the popular drinking/card game:
BULLSHIT!

10 lines of truth
1. Flight 93 was shot down by US fighters- justifiably so.
2. Iraq was and still is only about oil.
3. TIA is about spying on Americans.
4. The Partiot act is unconstitutional.
5. The DMCA is an overreaching easily manipulated bad law stifling innovation and driving technology out of America.
6. Trickle down sucks if you aren't at the top.
7. "Support the troops" does not mean cheer as they go to die and kill while simultaneously reducing their benefits.
8. Israel isn't always right. Sometimes 2 wrongs make 2 wrongs.
9. Despite listing these truths, I am not a terrorist.
10. Fox is biased.

TIA: It Ain't Total Information Awarenes

[Tackhead]

> Let's propose some new names!
>Totalitarian Information Awareness!

TIA: TIA: It Ain't Total Information Awareness!

(Under the Senate bill, would that make funding illegal, mandatory, or both?)

Forest, meet the trees

[burgburgburg]

I'd feel a lot safer if there were enough people at the docks of the ports to do even a minimal level of inspection of those large sealed containers coming from diverse foreign lands that easily be carrying biological agents, nuclear devices, massive amounts of conventional explosives or any combination of these.

Oh, and to trump your little anecdote, I'll bring up the Cuban coast guardsmen who piloted their ship directly into a resort at Key West. The men were armed, as was the ship. They docked and walked around (armed) trying to find someone to defect to. Here's a link in case you've forgotten.

Re:Don't worry,

[nanojath]

Yeah, don't forget that John Poindexter is in charge... he's an old hand at, um, unconventional funding of "special" government projects. Maybe his old buddies in the CIA can help him move a little ultra-pure heroin from our new buddies, the warlords of Afghanistan.

Go ahead and mod it funny... I wish it was more of a joke.

No worries, they'll just sell drugs instead

[Zen Mastuh]

It's been 29 years since Reagan announced the War On (Some) Drugs. In the meantime, millions of individuals involved in feeding America's rather large appetite have been absorbed into the world's largest prison/labor system. Many of these people have avoided prison by committing suicide, and many drug prisoners have died of AIDS (prison rape). Billions of dollars in assets have been siezed by police agencies with the result of militarization of police agencies of all sizes. Billions of taxpayer dollars are spent each year to ostensibly keep drugs out of America. And yet, drug use and drug availability are nearly unchanged after all this time. In other words, in spite of a very large, high-profile War On (Some) Drugs, the level of drug use in this country has not decreased.

What happened? Didn't we remove millions of drug dealers from general circulation? Didn't we pass enough Draconian laws to scare remaining drug dealers out of the business and steer aspiring drug dealers into other professions? Didn't we spend millions of dollars on an ad campaign designed to convince the average American that the horrible 9/11 attacks were paid for by drugs? Just how do drugs manage to keep flowing into this country? Somebody must be bringing them in, and not getting caught.

Additionally, we all know from experience that John Poindexter doesn't have any moral qualms with the selling of guns and/or drugs to finance extra-legal activity. Ergo, the TIA could (and likely will) fund itself by selling drugs. Civil Liberties activists will congratulate themselves for defeating the TIA as it goes underground and compiles information on YOU, using money from every bag you buy.

New bumpersticker idea: De-fund the TIA: Grow Your Own Drugs!

zombie spies

[Biff Stu]

For a moment, I thought it said "...John Ashcroft in his attempt to create a corps of volunteer zombie spies..."

It must have been those subsersive European mind-control rays creeping into my head. Better get more aluminum foil.

The U.S. Consitution, a highly scalable system ...

[basho3]

Call me naive, but I see the system working here. The executive branch attempted to overstep its powers, and Congress stepped in and put a stop to it. Certainly we've experienced a shocking erosion of our civil liberties in the last couple of years. Nevertheless, this news gave me a nice glow Sigs are overrated.

Private Donations

[qtp]

That's just it. For the most part, they can't do things like this because spending is allocated by Congress.

What do you think was going on during Iran-Contra? After congress outlawed the funding of US backed terrorism, the CIA continued thier operations using money from serveral sources, including private donations and selling cocaine

No agency would attempt to piss off Congress like that.

See the same links in reference to this statement.

PUH-LEEEEASE!

[jhylkema]

Tell me you're not that naive. Until 1997, we didn't even know the how much was being spent on inteligence. It took a FOIA lawsuit by the Federation of American Scientists to get the CIA to release the "black budget" figure. The CIA then announced the figure for 1997 - $26.6 billion (yes, billion with a "b.") The FAS then forced the release of the 1998 aggregate intelligence figure - $26.7 billion.

Anybody who knows anything about government budgeting will know this figure is a lie. Most federal programs get an automatic 10% annual budget increase. Any increase of less than 10% is called a "cut" (remember the mid-90s Democrat Goebbels-worthy "Medicare cuts" campaign? Same thing.) Had the CIA's budget only increased by $0.1 billion, we would have heard a hue and cry about the intelligence budget being "cut."

The point is, they're lying about the amount of the budget even when a court ordered its release. Having been given essentially a blank check, who says they won't (or haven't) implemented TIA already via the "black budget"?