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.

Comments

Always watched.....

[NiteShaed]

Inch by inch, we're getting closer to living in a massive panopticon.

Oh if Dwight Eisenhower were here today.

[Proudrooster]

President Eisenhower warned us the industrial military complex back in the 60's when technology started to take off. It is staggering how much of our annual budget that we spend on the military, even in so called peace time. It is even scarier how much of this budget is used for spying and profiling American citizens. To this day, we aren't even sure how people get on the "No Fly List". There must be a saner solution to this problem, other than report everything to the government and wait for some algorithm to report you match a specific profile and then send the black helicopters to come get you.

I leave you with the wisdom of Mr. Eisenhower from 1961.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present

* and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Wake up America and UK

[Garry Anderson]

I have wrote on subject of the Surveillance Society many times - including here on Slashdot.

e.g. this is snippet from one post:

Quote from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency: "The goal of the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program is to revolutionize the ability of the United States to detect, classify and identify foreign terrorists -- and decipher their plans -- and thereby enable the U.S. to take timely action to successfully preempt and defeat terrorist acts."

The declared GOAL is to, quote: "identify foreign terrorists" - what rubbish. They know you are American citizen, not even a suspect foreigner - yet want to know what you buy, where you travel - everything. They want to profile you, like a criminal. I find it hard to believe that U.S. politicians are that dumb to go along with this violation of the American Peoples Rights. Looks like TIA initials stand for Totally Ignorant Acceptance (for their propaganda).

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=100317&cid =8554109

Re:Real democarcy

[aussersterne]

It is not only information that is manipulated by the establishment, it is the candidates, too. They give you candidtates of their selection groomed in the nagivation of their power structures and achievement of their ends, present a benign and homogenized view of the candidate pool by controlling all information flow through deep event/program secrecy, fearmongering, and exceptional press control, then take care to ensure that if you have somehow managed to keep your own head through all the propaganda, you are unable to run for office yourself or to cast a vote when you turn up at the polls anyway.

In short, the United States is FINISHED. Democracy has been lost and the policy infrastructure has lapsed into the same "Evil Empire" nature that Reagan attributed to the Soviet Union. As it turns out, it's not that communism is bad and capitalism is good, it's that (as we have always known), absolute power corrupts absolutely.

In a world in which institutions are given the force of legal identity as individuals, and they form the backbone, heart, and soul of superpowers (read: absolute powers), such institutions are doomed to be corrupted absolutely and to tyrranize their citizens so completely that revolution is inevitable after a many-decades-long period of corruption, deceit, global exploitation, death, and suffering.

The former Soviet Union continues to attempt to emerge from this darkness. The United States has teetered on its edge since Vietnam, and thanks to Bush and Company, has now entered the darkness wholesale and with gusto, not to emerge for decades or even centuries, if ever.

The laiety can't see it yet... But they will. Give U.S. citizens a decade and they will suddenly realize that they are living inside their worst nightmare--a totalitarian military-industrial state--and they will wonder just how they got there, and just how they are going to get out, never realizing that their own voting choices and support for capitalist democracy and the military-industrial complex are what led them to the slaughter.

And then, like the Soviets did for decades before them, they will languish in anguish indefinitely in a grey and gun-laden world, waiting for any ray of sunlight while the rest of the world is terrified of them all, not realizing that they are every bit as trapped inside the complex as the rest of humanity feels trapped under its thumb.

Re:To the highest bidder

[cluckshot]

I know I risk being moderated into oblivion by partizans who just don't get it , but here goes. The political assassination of parties character by this means is not just a D vs R thing. The Republican Party leadership under President Bush has used this to conduct virtual political assassination of very nearly every Republican who stood up for anything. As such no farm club exists to run in the next election and the Republican party is politically neutered as a result. It threatens the very party existence. This sort of thing destroys all levels of political function. I am speaking as a witness from the inside so if you moderate this realize I am talking fact and not opinion.

Re:Information is power

[wytcld]

I'm in a small Vermont town recently featured on the front page of the Washington Post because the police chief got an earmark grant to spend $100,000 putting 19 surveillance cameras throughout the 1.2 square mile village of 3,000. He said, "Trust me, we'd never abuse this. Heck, you're not that interesting to watch!" When the public rose up about 5 to 1 against the proposal, the village trustees voted to have the cops buy digital radios instead of the cameras. The cops immediately began issuing traffic tickets to everyone going 2 or 3 mph over the 15 mph speed limit through downtown, while working to intimidate people into signing their new petition to revert to the camera plan.

On the one hand, I've never heard so many great speechs from citizens about bedrock American values as occurred in the village trustees' meeting that focused on the chief's camera plan. On the other hand, I haven't seen on a local level such a total willingness to abuse power on the part of the cops, over what in the scheme of things should be but a minor disappointment to them (they still get shiney new radios!), and so soon after the chief's claim that they'd never abuse power.