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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.'"
ARDA's mission is to sponsor high-risk high-payoff research designed to leverage leading edge technology in the solution of some of the most critical poblems facing the intelligence community (IC).
High Risk as in 'Public Backlash'?
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
am I not even remotely surprised by this announcement ?
Could anyone actually trust a government that passed the PATRIOT Act to actually can TIA ?
We tell them no, then they break it in to a bunch of pieces and do it anyway.
Why do we keep electing these people who keep misrepresenting us to represent us?
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
I don't think treating americans diffrently based on where they are in the world is a good precident to set....
The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
Many government agencies have been struggling to pay catch up when it comes to the "Information Revolution". Now a decade after the revolution began some are starting to realize the potential. It's been pretty embarassing to sit at your desk in the CIA and not be able to do a Google Search. I believe that the "total information awareness" program is simply a way to try and rectify this.
The tools are only going to get better, and the more laws and policies that allow the "leakage" of personal information will only make "privacy" a state of mind as opposed to something you actually have. If congress was so concerned about privacy perhaps they would rethink the Patriot Act, or other invasive police policies that have been en vogue for the last decade.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
I just recently applied for a mortgage loan. The loan guy was happy to share my credit report with me. I looked it over, and found a section I couldn't make sense of. I asked the loan guy what that section meant. He said "That's whether or not you're a terrorist. Congrats, you're not." So as far as the credit reporting agencies go, yes, they track that stuff. Scarier still, that little tidbit, accurate or not, is available to every person capable of pulling a credit rating...
;)
I asked the loan guy what he would do if the report said I was a terrorist... He said "I'd excuse myself to the restroom, get in my car, drive at least five miles away, then call my boss!"
It is in fact not at all like what the East German secret police (Stasi) did during the cold war. There was no legislative shell game to play because the legislature was a sham. The scope of individual liberty was so small that there was no comparable initiative from Stasi. There was no need to sift through large amounts of data about citizens to find out what they needed to know. Activities were all duly registered, and all records were available to them. Elaborate systems of informants kept tabs on any person of interest.
It's hard to believe that anyone old enough to remember the cold war would say something so ridiculous. American domestic intelligence activities take place in a society where individuals enjoy broad latitude of action outside of state control. Without that context, total information awareness or whatever it has become would not even be a dream in a spies mind.
Both sides read the founding documents the way they want. Dem's are all about freedom of speech until it comes to something like campaign finance reform, which is a blatant violation of freedom of speech. They crap on our right to bear arms. Neutering it every chance they get. The republicans are giving the finger to our rights to privacy with all this patriot act and other such bullshit. Denying US citizens the right to legal representation and a fair trial by classifying them as POW's (or whatever they are calling them this week). There are so many more examples on both sides. The government is seriously getting out of hand. It has grown into something it was never intended to be. Things went wrong when power was taken away from the states and sent to D.C.
"In the language of the Elder Days, 'Arda' signified the World and all that is in it." -- from The Encyclopedia of Arda
I guess it's a suitably ambitious acronym for the project.
Yes it does. The exec branch made the decision to detain an US citizens and ignored their oaths. What makes you think they will do what they should in regards to the USA PATRIOT act?
... when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." Congress
---------------------
July 1, 2002
Citizen Padilla: Dangerous Precedents
by Robert A. Levy
Robert A. Levy is senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute.
Jose Padilla, a.k.a. Abdullah al-Muhajir, supposedly plotted to build and detonate a radiological "dirty bomb." He is a U.S. citizen. Yet he's being detained by the military -- indefinitely, without seeing an attorney, even though he hasn't been charged with any crime. Yaser Esam Hamdi is also a U.S. citizen. He, too, is being detained by the military -- indefinitely, without seeing an attorney, even though he hasn't been charged with any crime. Meanwhile, Zacarias Moussaoui, purportedly the 20th hijacker, is not a U.S. citizen. Neither is Richard Reid, the alleged shoe bomber. Both have attorneys. Both have been charged before federal civilian courts.
What gives? Four men: two citizens and two non-citizens. Is it possible that constitutional rights -- like habeas corpus, which requires the government to justify continued detentions, and the Sixth Amendment, which assures a speedy and public jury trial with assistance of counsel -- can be denied to citizens yet extended to non-citizens? That's what the Bush administration would have us believe. Citizen Padilla's treatment is perfectly legitimate, insists Attorney General John Ashcroft, because Padilla is an "enemy combatant" and there is "clear Supreme Court precedent" to handle those persons differently, even if they are citizens.
Ashcroft's so-called clear precedent is a 1942 Supreme Court case, Ex Parte Quirin, which dealt with Nazi saboteurs, at least one of whom was a U.S. citizen. "Enemy combatants," said the Court, are either lawful -- for example, the regular army of a belligerent country -- or unlawful -- for example, terrorists. When lawful combatants are captured, they are POWs. As POWs, they cannot be tried (except for war crimes), they must be repatriated after hostilities are over, and they only have to provide their name, rank, and serial number if interrogated. Clearly, that's not what the Justice Department has in mind for Padilla.
Unlawful combatants are different. When unlawful combatants are captured, they can be tried by a military tribunal. That's what happened to the Nazi saboteurs in Quirin. But Padilla has not been charged much less tried. Indeed, the president's executive order of November 2001 excludes U.S. citizens from the purview of military tribunals. If the president were to modify his order, the Quirin decision might provide legal authority for the military to try Padilla. But the decision provides no legal authority for detaining a citizen without an attorney solely for purposes of aggressive interrogation.
Moreover, the Constitution does not distinguish between the protections extended to ordinary citizens on one hand and unlawful-combatant citizens on the other. Nor does the Constitution distinguish between the crimes covered by the Fifth and Sixth Amendments and the terrorist acts Padilla is suspected of planning. Still, the Quirin Court justified those distinctions -- noting that Congress had formally declared war and thereby invoked articles of war that expressly authorized the trial of unlawful combatants by military tribunal. Today, the situation is very different. We've had virtually no input from Congress: no declaration of war, no authorization of tribunals, and no suspension of habeas corpus.
Yet those functions are explicitly assigned to Congress by Article I of the Constitution. It is Congress, not the executive branch, which has the power "To declare War" and "To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court." Only Congress can suspend the "Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus
I lived in West Berlin for over a year oh so long ago. I used to make kindof a study of the wall. Even brought back a piece of it, long before it came down and was sold in pieces in the US like pet rocks. (taking the piece home made kindof a funny story. I was taken off the subway by plainclothes policemen who thought I was going to use it to vandalize something. I switched to English and told them I was an American tourist who was bringing home a souvenir, so they let me go, rock and all)
From what I remember, there was "the wall" - that part that is famous in pictures, with the graffiti and all. Incidently, it was covered/topped with what looked like a continuous cylinder maybe 2 or 3 feet in diameter along the top. I imagine that would have been very hard to get past without special equipment. Behind the wall was the no man's land with a small access road for patrols and the antitank ditch in it. Behind that was a somewhat shorter inner wall as well.
Of course, "the wall" was different in different places. In some places it was partly made up of buildings. Additionally, the western subway went under parts of East Berlin. You could sometimes see guards in the stations in the Eastern part.
It was an interesting study in security. As the wall changed in form due to the changing geography, infrastructure, and so forth, you could see how one who wanted out would attempt to choose the weakest link. One guy built a flat car and drove under the checkpoint gates. Another tightrope walked over the wall (IIRC). And so forth.
The government isn't really spying on you, per se.
Of course not.
They are taking all the public information out there, and data mining it to potentially flag and catch criminals and terrorists.
And it won't flag and catch me by mistake. They'd never make an error like that. This technology only affects bad guys.
This actually should be wonderful news for me. I made $92 off of Poindexter's stupid Total Information Awareness program last year by selling this T-shirt protesting it: "I gave up my essential liberties to obtain a little temporary security, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt!" [Disclaimer: I might make money off you if you click that link and buy one, but I have a job, honestly don't need your money, would forward it to no worthy cause, and am just showing off my shirt design and bragging about the fact that I made $92 off of Total Information Awareness.]
The crowd here turn into luddites as soon as technology is used by the government, but I think this is a great use for it. The 9/11 hijackers were in plain view, but because of the different agencies and bureaucracies, they fell through. This could be a tool to find the next 9/11 and I am all for it.
Well, let's not get too presumptive about 9/11. It hasn't been demonstrated at all that the only way to prevent this attack would have been to implement a massively connected database with an extensive electronic dossier on each one of us. In fact, it hasn't been demonstrated at all that the attack could not have been prevented simply by people doing their jobs like they were supposed to.
Once the 9/11 commission finishes its report, maybe we will see what improvements can be made short of creating an unAmerican police state.
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.
I used to work for TIA, as part of a software contractor. If I named the contractor, it would mean little to you, but we were an integral and successful part of Poindexter's plans - I was supposed to meet the man myself and ended up meeting all his direct reports (he was busy at the last minute). We were part of a larger software effort invovling information databases. I made quite a good living.
I ended up in the job, as is always the way, by drifting from one task to another inside the contractor until I ended up doing anti-terrorist work - a classic "slippery slope".
I did the only honest thing I felt I could - I quit. Of course, I'm not going to claim I was any sort of hero. Because I didn't like why I was working, I didn't like my job, and as a software programmer, it wasn't too hard to find another job. But, I did quit a good job for essentially political reasons.
I mention this for 2 reasons: 1) If people refused to do the work, refused to take the jobs, the program would never succeed (I know it's easy to say - I have no kids to feed - but still, it's true). Hell, people fled the country to avoid fighting in Vietnam. 2) It was common knowledge that there was little risk in having TIA go away - everything would stay the same (and has, at my old company). 3) What we were doing was not secret - never was. But nobody knew anyway, and the people running the show liked it that way. Security through obscurity.
Insightful my ass. This "If you don't like it, leave" bullshit from the neo-conservative right wing-nuts is growing tiresome. This is America, and if you don't like something you are free to speak out against it and try to get it changed. If you don't like that, then you can leave. Try picking a state that shares your bullshit nationalist views about the government being the final arbiter of all that is good and correct. I hear that Saudi Arabia is nice this time of year.