Total Information Awareness, For One

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."

Comments

Welcome to the Global Village

[heironymouscoward]

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.

Re:doesn't seem all that TIA...

[ScrewMaster]

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.