Slashdot Mirror
Total Information Awareness, Disguised And Alive
unassimilatible writes "According to the AP, aspects of the controversial Total Information Awareness DARPA program, officially shut down by the U.S. Congress in September 2003 after a public outcry, seem to have survived. The article reports, 'Some projects from retired Adm. John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness effort were transferred to U.S. intelligence offices, congressional, federal and research officials told The Associated Press. In addition, Congress left undisturbed a separate but similar $64 million research program run by a little-known office called the Advanced Research and Development Activity, or ARDA, that has used some of the same researchers as Poindexter's program.'"
How about that US CITIZEN that is currently being held with out trial and who has been denied a lawyer?
I think everyone on Slashdot called this one last July.
Basically, the funding bill that supposedly "killed" TIA only banned funding for the program called "Terrorism Information Awareness." It's a gaping legal loophole that seems to have been written in a piss-poor attempt at reassuring Joe and Jane CNN Viewer that the good government really had no intention to spy on them for subversive activities, no-siree.
I'm not surprised the obvious result is taking place. I am surprised that someone in a newsroom somewhere thought to follow up on the fate of TIA-related research.
Remember: It's not paranoia if they're really watching you.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
People are very confused on what and who DARPA is. I have worked on a few DARPA projects and this is how it normally goes.
DARPA is only concerned with research. Not production or use.
On the couple of DARPA programs I worked on it goes like this.
1.) DARPA gets a crazy idea (like "I wonder if we can make an anti-gravity device".)
2.) DARPA puts together about 6 to 10 teams of researchers (from industry and academia) and gives them some money to study the problem.
3.) 6 months or so later the teams present their ideas to DARPA. DARPA then decides if it wants to stop the research or continue.
4.) If DARPA continues. It will pick the best 2 or 3 approaches and give those teams more money for more details on their approach.
5.) 6 months or so later the teams present their approaches to DARPA. If DARPA really likes an idea, it might have one of the teams build a small prototype.
If the prototype works out DARPA will ask congress to take the research to production (not under DARPA but under DOD).
Very, very rarely does a DARPA project make it to production.