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Total Information Awareness still Running
gordm writes "National Journal reports that, instead of being shut down 2 years ago, the Total Information Awareness program is still datamining away. Must be effective. What else could explain Morrissey's latest adventure?" Just posting this story probably puts me on their radar.
OTOH, national defense is a legitimate government task, unlike the pointless shuffling around of wealth through Social Security and the various subsidy programs the US employs. Still it is disturbing how much money has been spent so inefficiently. One key area of concern for me is that many defense needs are covered by just one supplier (eg, most aircraft, until recently small arms ammunition). It's not healthy to depend on a single supplier for important needs. So we seem to be in a situation where both the defense budget is increasing yet at the same time it is being spent inefficiently to fund the defense oligopolies and monopolies.
Is it surprising that a small percentage of Arabs eventually decided to react to violence with more violence? Is it surprising that Arabs don't like being killed?
Only the simpleminded could simplify such a complex situation into such a simplistic statement.
Yes, that's right, I'm calling you simple.
Backing one group against another is only a problem when you back the losing side. When the US backed one group of Europeans against another group of Europeans in WW2, it turned out fine because they backed the winning side. Ditto for when they backed South Korea against North Korea and China. Unfortiunately, the Middle East situation is a wee bit more complex, and the approach that they took was half-assed, all over the place, and therefore ineffective. There have as yet been no clear victors, and since US policy in the middle east has been flopping around like a fish out of water they've managed to piss off the majority of militant groups.
In short, it has nothing to do with "arabs not liking to be killed". It has to do with decades of a weak and inefficient foreign policy.
I don't care if the Fed is running a project to profile terrorists based off financial transactions, purchases, telecommunications, all that jazz. Many private industries like choicepoint already gathered information close to that previously, not to mention the phone records etc.
What is scary though, is that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Danger identified members of the 9-11 terrorist group prior to their attack, yet the wall of seperation between the military and law enforcement created by Jamie Gorelick was sufficient to deter that information sharing to the FBI (Able Danger was a SOCOM project).
We in the US already know we don't have half the consumer protections our european cousins have. That is why companies share our information all the time, for cash. While it isn't something I like, it isn't something I can stop either. If those companies are exploiting my personal info for cash, why can't the US govt use that same kind of info to protect us?
All the slashdot conspiracy theorists need to wake up and smell the coffee. This is not 1960. The US now has very real enemies seeking to get here and slaughter innocents. Get off your stupid America hating, "we caused this" retarded platform too.
I'm all for TIA, and I'd love to see a biometric national ID card next.