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TIA Project to End
Marnhinn writes "MSNBC is reporting that the Terrorism Spying Project (also known as TIA) is dead. The government is cancelling most of the project and changing the rest to focus on people outside the United States." TIA had been on death's door for a while, but now it's finally official. Some of the programs will still be around, however, they will just be shifted over to different departments.
Well one interesting legal point someone mentioned a while back was whilst most countries constitutions do not allow spying on their citizens there is nothing stopping them from spying on other counties citizens. A legal loophole would allow lets say the US and UK to have an agreement whereby they say "you spy on mine and I'ill spy on yours and we'ill exchange the information"
I don't know about this. If it were truly scrapped, then it would be a wonderful thing. More likely, however, it's simply being driven underground.
Once granted power, no government ever gives it up willingly. That's the whole point of limited government, and it's why I doubt that this is really being cancelled. I'd watch the budget for next year, to see if the infamous black budget suddently grows by the same amount that TIA would have gotten.
The article neglects to mention that some states have begun implementing their own version of TIA (see The Washington Post article). There appears to be some feeling that they can sneak in under the radar if it's not a federal program.
The pledges of restraint by Florida law enforcement officials are particularly comforting.
or does it just make it tolerable?
So how long will it be before I start seeing T1 lines failing again when they start removing the wiretaps?
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
Anyone here believe the US and UK governments aren't spying on their own citizens, legally or not?
They are. Echelon would certainly appear to be a large scheme which would allow the interchange of data between the various participating countries. I'm not saying that they do it as a matter of routine, but I have no doubts that they use each other for "unofficial" internal information gathering for a handful of individuals.
That might not be the best example. The US and UK collaborate to a much greater extent than the US and Israelis do, and it's already going on - and not just in Iraq. For example, the Echelon listening system that's run jointly by the American NSA and GCHQ here in England. There's a nice political loophole that gets used - "hey, we speak the same language and used to be the same country, we'll be okay, let's just spy on those dang furriners instead" - so they don't have to publicise it or seek approval.
Sigh.
"This is why men never share their feelings; because women always remember." -Just Shoot Me.
Anybody who thinks for a minute that TIA is going away as long as Ashcroft is AG is high. This isn't a retreat, it's a regrouping before the next attack. As has been discussed here before, we will see this thing pop up again, medusa-like, under a variety of disguises; they'll be tracking child molesters, deadbeat dads, drug dealers, rapists, what have you, and each will be a noble enterprise, as difficult to criticize as a newborn baby. (No mention of rogue librarians will be made, for sure.) Behind the scenes, of course, will be the massive data-mining that was the original goal. We'll only hear about THAT part incidentally, incrementally, accidentally, etc-ally.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
I am now looking to buy that french deck of cards - cood be a very insightful gift here in North America (especially here in Canada) for people who has not completely lost the sense of humor :)
Less is more !
Well, if they could narrow it down to "this guy" or "that gal," they would still have authority under PATRIOT to do damn near anything they want provided with sufficient justification. The problem with TIA was narrowing the net down to 270 million or so people in the hopes of finding something interesting, sort of like scooping up the entire Pacific Ocean in the hopes of finding a sea urchin.
Star Wars was supposed to end, but lived on in black budget for many years, hiding in the dark and with only small leaks of information leaked out in the ninthies, and then almost 15 years later the program derived into the Ballistic Missile Defense program.
So the program in it's current form is dead, but the research necessarily to complete the program for future use will continue.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
Powerful surveillance technologies in the hands of Western security organizations are the thermonuclear deterrent of the present day. They are expensive, unpopular, and capable of being used for any number of great evils - but they are the only alternative to the maintenance of enormous conventional forces designed to fight brutal and exhausting wars of occupation.
It's not that TIA has died - it's that it has been moved into the secret realm and given to people who have the stomach to run it. Use of technologies like TIA is the best option we have available to defend the comfortable lives we lead and to provide hope for improving the lives of people around the world through economic prosperity driven by the engine of Western markets. Could it be used for terrible evil? Yes. Will it be? That's a question of good government - government by individuals who can handle the seriousness of the moral issues involved without panicking and fleeing in terror.
H4x0r Economist - k33ping d3m0cr4cy l33t 51Nc3 1987
From "SECRECY NEWS from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy" -- http://ic-arda.org/Novel_Intelligence/index.html "Indeed, one TIA-like program conducted under the auspices of U.S. intelligence is the "Novel Intelligence from Massive Data" (NIMD) initiative of the little-known Intelligence Community Advanced Research and Development Activity (ARDA). Pursued with a minimal public profile and lacking a polarizing figure like Adm. Poindexter to galvanize opposition, NIMD has proceeded quietly even as TIA imploded. The existence of NIMD was first noted last year by Jim McGee of CQ Homeland Security. More recently, on July 24, 2003 he wrote in CQ Homeland Security that NIMD was "roaring down a parallel research track to TIA." NIMD was also cited in a May 21, 2003 article in the New York Times."