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Total Information Awareness, For One

Posted by timothy on from the aggregation-nation dept.

Jason writes "This guy has created his own TIA program for his electronic transactions around DC. He writes, 'Conceptually, I decided to create a personal TIA program to track my own electronic movements... and to document every single electronically-recorded transaction I've made.' A small vignette into what could be done with your electronic droppings."

8 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. doesn't seem all that TIA... by rumpledstiltskin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    looks like he just took quicken or MS money or some equivalent application and added addresses and posted the locations on a map. This doesn't seem to be nearly the scope of ashcroft's wet dream come true (TIA).

    1. Re:doesn't seem all that TIA... by ScrewMaster · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ahem.

      It would protect me in the long run if ever I did get accused of something I didn't do.

      Throw the teddy bear away and WAKE UP. The Law is only as good as those that enforce it. It's time you woke up to the fact that those in charge of that important function may no longer be our friends. And you obviously haven't the slightest idea what it means to be merely accused of a serious crime. Being so accused is, in itself, a punitive activity nowadays. Your life will never be the same, even if you are ultimately vindicated. I have enough attorneys in my family to have some understanding of what it is like to be run through the Justice system. You don't want that to happen to you or anyone you care about. Invasive, error-prone systems like TIA may, or may not, serve their stated function of deterring terrorism. What they will do is increase the number of individuals who, through no fault of their own, are put through the wringer.

      I have nothing to hide. I follow the law.

      So do I. That's my choice. And I expect to be left alone, without experiencing any undue scrutiny or privacy violations, until I do perform some illegal activity. I see no reason to allow the government to presume that I (and you, or you) might someday exhibit criminal behavior and to justify monitoring our daily activities because of that presumption, and to further log that activity until they decide it is no longer useful. Do not make the mistake (as so many before us have) of assuming that the government has no interest in you. If they didn't have that interest, they wouldn't want TIA.

      Look at history. Every time a government has told its citizens, "Yes, we are assuming excessive powers that we cannot reasonably justify but, hey, don't worry ... if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" bad things happened. It all hinges on who decides what is worth hiding. That is, in fact, the very time to start worrying.

      Now, I don't want to sound like some bleeding-heart liberal and I'm hardly defending terrorists, kidnappers or child molesters but the truth is that, in the United States, those people do have Constutionally-guaranteed rights. And why is that? Because it was always considered better to let a guilty man go free than to imprison an innocent one. And America is one of the few nations, to this very day, the still believes in this principle. At least, I hope we still do.

      --
      The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  2. Welcome to the Global Village by heironymouscoward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Where everyone knows all your secrets...

    When personal data is confidential, only governments and big business will have access to it. When personal data is public, even corrupt officials will be forced to behave.

    The genie is out of the bottle, and it seems that only laws to mandate total and full access to all data by anyone who wants it will protect us from those who would seek to use such power against us.

    Yes, I know it'd be a nightmare if anyone could monitor my phone records, but the nightmare could become quite fun if it went both ways.

    --
    Ceci n'est pas une signature
    1. Re:Welcome to the Global Village by AmigaAvenger · · Score: 3, Insightful
      When personal data is public, even corrupt officials will be forced to behave.



      Interesting assumption, but wrong... You assumed the corrupt officials will 1) allow their own CORRECT information to be made public, as opposed to cleaning it up first, and 2) that the public information released on you is actually true, and not replaced with previously mentioned corrupt official's info...

  3. Same old problem by Crashmarik · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The ability to gather the data about you has long been there. Commercial sources have been able to do this for nearly two decades, anyone remember the late and not lamented Lotus Marketplace ?.

    The real trick is to turn the raw data into meaningfull information. Its that lack of discrimination thats truly scary in letting the government assume that kind of power.

    I have no wish to have storm troopers drilling holes in my ceiling because my name is one letter off from a terrorist, or because I bought a pint of humous at the supermarket. Untill there is sufficient discrimination in the system to be intelligent about who it singles out, and Unless there is further the mandatory requirement for human investigation and discretion before acting this type of technology will be nothing but a loose cannon.

    As things currently stand this type of information will just be used to harrass and persecute people that have been flagged by or have annoyed some government beureuacrat. Terry pratchet in his truly insightfull manner summed up the relationship between the populace and the law, "Commander Grimes surveyed the crowd of people and amused himself by trying to figure out what each one was guilty of". Everyone is guilty of something, with the current level of litigation and legality within our society most people are guilty of many things they aren't even aware of.

    If TIA raw data is available for call up on any individual, suspicious material will be found, and nominally innocent people will have their lives made a hell. If however it can be predictive and then mediated with severe limits it could actually serve a valuable purpose.

  4. Re:This guy seems pretty paranoid. by ScrewMaster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Uh ... and you're not? It is NOT paranoia when they actually are out to get you, you know.

    Besides, I thought it was interesting to see a concrete example of what everyone (paranoids as well as normal sheep) has been worrying about. It's one thing when cops, spooks and other investigators have to spend time and effort to research what their victims, I mean, subjects are doing. It's quite another when detailed historical information about every person in the U.S. can be pulled up on a graphics monitor on an instant's notice, with no more effort than a couple of mouse clicks. No, I don't like that at all ... no significant barriers to misuse.

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  5. Re:And it just goes to illustrate... by ScrewMaster · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yes, but on the other hand no commercial interest has even a fraction of the resources available to it that the Federal Government has, and would cheerfully misdirect to this end. And you also don't realize that long-term archival storage of this information isn't the point. The fact that you bought a box of doughnuts ten years ago is irrelevant: the fact that you bought something yesterday that is considered relevant today is the point. What they can do is require organizations that do collect personal information (credit bureaus, banks) to look for specific information and forward it to the TIA systems. There is already precedent for that: banks are required to report cash transactions that exceed specific limits, for example.

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  6. Re:I've audited banks... by ScrewMaster · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No only do they want it available with judicial oversight, they want it available on-demand, conveniently, right on their desktops. No waiting ... just point and click. No thanks ... I want these people to have to work to find out anything of consequence about me.

    The other, bigger, danger is in the centralization of information. Yes, certainly, someone with a stack of subpoena forms can go make a bunch of phone calls, find out where your accounts are, and get what he wants. The data is stored all over in different systems by different organizations ... anyone wanting to find out everything about you specifically will have some work to do.

    Now imagine that same information being stored on a massive government system or network. Even if it isn't stored there, but is simply available upon-demand by that government system it means that your personal info can be grabbed by a Fed, special agent, hacker, cracker, terrorist, or foreign government at a single point of entry.

    That's risky at best. Given the government's track record on security (and the Department of Homeland Security's recent choice of Microsoft products for all it's in-house needs) I think it's fair to assume that unauthorized access would occur.

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.