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

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.

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: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?