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.

Re:Always watched.....

[necrodeep]

1984 comes to you live in 2024...
That's a reality that scares me...

Or if Google, the government, and the pharmacuticle companies join up
you get the world of THX 1138... some scary prospects for our future.

Re:Always watched.....

[Odin's Raven]

1984 comes to you live in 2024...

Geez, the government just can't get anything completed on schedule...

not surprised..

[Bananatree3]

If black projects cant get funding in public view, they work behind the scenes and find money elsewhere.

I told you...

[loserhead]

the tinfoil hat was a GOOD idea!!!!

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.

Re:Oh if Dwight Eisenhower were here today.

[KDR_11k]

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.

Well, there we've got our problem.

To the highest bidder

[nurb432]

I wouldnt be suprised if at some point the government will start selling off 'de-classifed' data to the highest bidder. Such as what kind of socks you buy.. or your food habits..

the rest of the data ( like your friends, or what street corner you stopped too long at last saturday at 12am ) wont be sold off. Instead it will be used against you when your turn to be directly invesigated comes. Remember, we are all criminals to 'the system'.

Re:To the highest bidder

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, lord, this will probably bring out the polititrolls, but it's important to the topic.

Recently, when it came to light that Scooter Libby the former chief of staff to the Vice President may have been cleared to participate in the leak of classified information by his superiors (IE the VP), Vice President Dick Cheney went on one of the cable news talk shows and said that he had the ability to declassify information at will. He says he was given this new ability by an unspecified executive order. He declined to say if he actually has used this new ability.

Keep in mind that this is the deals with the Valarie Plame affair, meaning the administration has given itself the ability to spontainiously declare information they have gathered on a political opponent declassified. And, then, they can leak it to the press in an effort to launch a propaganda campaign. This affair also shows, that even if the information on you does not show illegality, immorality, or unethical behavior, it can still damage you if dispersed to the public at large.

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:To the highest bidder

[Fulcrum of Evil]

If you are a cancer researcher, and this is all you have done for 15 years, and you discover a cure, but risk loosing all of your funding, and having to persue another medical problem, do you release it to the masses? Some people will, some people will not.

Holy shit, of course you do! Then you go get funding for the next thing by saying 'My team cured Cancer, fuck you'. Do you really think Bruce Willis auditions anymore?

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:Wake up America and UK

[TubeSteak]

I'm going to quote an old post from the "DMCA Abuse Widespread" article:

Whenever a controversial law is proposed, and its supporters, when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, use a phrase along the lines of 'Perhaps in theory, but the law would never be applied in that way' - they're lying . They intend to use the law that way as early and as often as possible.

A true Republican would not sponsor or encourage this type of invasive program.

Eisenhower warned us: Military-Industrial Complex

[Futurepower(R)]

Over a period of decades, the U.S. government paid to kill Arabs and interfere with their politics. The U.S. government also paid to train Arabs in terrorism to fight in Afghanistan.

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?

Now, those who wanted violence have what they want. They can claim that there is a threat, and can make billions in largely hidden contracts for weapons and contracts for war.

The U.S. government is more corrupt now than ever before. Here are some short reviews of books about the corruption. The article is old and needs revision and additions, but gives a small view of a very extensive subject: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.

Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in World War Two and former U.S. President General Dwight D. Eisenhower said in a famous speech that we should beware of the "military-industrial complex". Here's a quote:

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial 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."

Another quote:

"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."

--
Before, Saddam got Iraq oil profits & paid part to kill Iraqis. Now a few Americans share Iraq oil profits, & U.S. citizens pay to kill Iraqis. Improvement?

TIA - Spanish for Aunt ?

[tengu1sd]

I wonder if Alberto Gonzales had a hand in naming Total Information Awareness. In the small town where I grew up, Tias knew everything going on, the comings and goings, motivations, credit balances and who was seeing who.

Information is power

[Woldry]

The danger with TIA, as with any collection of information with or without the consent of the subjects of the information, is that the power will eventually fall into the hands of someone who will abuse it. Not "might", not "will unless we're careful" -- WILL, as inevitably and certainly as death. The failure to understand this certainty is what enables this kind of creeping infringement of power. Every generation thinks that it has the savvy and the tools to prevent the abuses -- when in reality prevention of abuse is impossible.

Eisenhower's words, quoted by several other /.'ers -- The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist -- apply to more than just the "military-industrial complex". Any power will be "misplaced" as soon as just one unethical person gets his hands on it.

The only way to limit (not prevent) abuses is to severely curtail the amount of power out there to be abused.

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.

God is good

[Anonymous Coward]

bomb bomb allah president kill bush cheney islam iraq bomb nuke nuclear batmobile taliban saddam osama afghanistan nuke china nuke bomb allah terrorist wtc

Congressional Impotence

[jasonditz]

With all the other stories that've been breaking in the past few months of the NSA wholesale spying on American civilians, the real news here isn't just that the TIA is around. It's that the Senate ordered it shut down, and it wasn't.

Lets look at the past couple of years. The Executive branch has claimed the powers to: declare people including American citizens "enemy combatants" and hold them incommunicado overseas for however long they wish with no access to the US court system, wiretap American citizens within the United States without a court order or indeed any judicial review. Recently the Vice President has also claimed to power to unilaterally declassify anything that he wants.

The CIA has been caught running torture flights through allied countries without their apparent knowledge, running secret prisons in EU member states without EU knowledge, and to top it off, they were caught kidnapping people on the streets of Milan without the knowledge of the Italian government.

The Pentagon, the FBI and the California National Guard have all been caught spying on peaceful protesters on American soil, in spite of a law that specifically forbids this.

A few months ago... Congress passed a law banning torture. The President grudgingly signed this into law, but reiterated his belief that he wasn't personally bound by the ban.

Now we find out that while the Senate ordered a domestic surveillance operation shut down years ago because it was a threat to the privacy of the average American... the Executive branch has decided to keep it going anyhow, without anyone's knowledge.

What's the point of even having a Legislative or Judicial branch anymore? They have no real powers at this point.

The Executive branch can just arbitrarily declare people outside the judicial branch's jurisdiction to keep them out of the courts, and the whole notion of getting a court order for federal law enforcement action is now considered "obsolete".

The Legislature still theoretically gets to pass laws, but the executive branch can basically break them at will... and since the power of enforcing those laws falls within the executive branch's domain, is it any wonder that all these overt violations of the laws of Congress never amount to any meaningful charges?

In fact, we don't even know how far the executive branch's power goes at this point... nobody new the President had the power to wiretap without warrants. The Constitution never mentions it... in fact, federal law specifically prohibits it. Indeed, when the press first found out about this power, they were pressured to keep it a secret (which they did for over a year), and when the existance of this power was revealed to thew general public, members of the executive branch denounced the revelation of the power itself as unlawful.

Paranoia or not -- you tell me

[smchris]

What the heck. Ridicule or not, I'll take /. as the forum to say that I'm an outspoken person against the current government on blogs and reveal that I have had the "Philip K. Dick experience".

As a large percentage of /.ers probably know, PKD wasn't in a good state when he died. He said that his house was ransacked and, although he said he didn't know who did it, he suspected the FBI or local sheriff. Some people think he might have done it himself at that point in his life.

You have to visualize my apartment storage. Since I hoard books and some amateur radio equipment, it is much like a solid 8x8x6 cube of heavy boxes. One night I got broken into and _every_ box inspected. Other building occupants were coming down over the HOURS I was repacking and marveling how my stuff had exploded into the aisles of the space.

Yet, here's the thing. As far as I can tell, NOTHING and I emphasize NOTHING was taken. Screw the amateur radio equipment -- where are you going to hock an old HF transceiver quietly? But it seems to me if I were some young punk(s) who went to that much trouble I would have either taken something like the window air conditioner, the few 1950s comic books, or the like for slight compensation of the night or maybe just destroyed some stuff out of anger and frustration.

The local police station told me, "Nothing stolen or destroyed, no crime." So who has that discipline? Maybe info thieves looking for cancelled checks and credit cards (_old_ ones in my storage space?) or someone else who wanted to know who I was and what I was holding. You give me your guess who you think that would be.

If nothing else, when a government demonstrates that it thinks it can make and break the law and work in the dark, paranoia is going to rise. That's not necessarily a bad attitude for a citizen either but, then, when is enough enough? The first casualty of a lawless government is peace of mind.

Totally Aware except for one thing

[jafac]

Unaware of the 4th Amendment

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.

Matrix of Evil

[danratherfoe]

Did you really believe that they would ever voluntarily slow the march toward a complete surveillance society where everything that you buy, everywhere you go and even every conversation that you have is ruthlessly cataloged by the state. This is why they are pushing the RFID chips in products, the RFID chips in people, the cashless society, the national ID card (see HR418, the "Real ID" act http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.418 : ), the NSA domestic spying, and the patriot act. Did you know that under the PATRIOT act (HR3162 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:h.r.0 3162: ) all of your property can be seized and the burden will be on you to prove that you are not a terrorist so that you can get your property back. What is the definition of a terrorist? Under section 802 of the PATRIOT act, a terrorist is anyone who is involved in "dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State" is a terrorist. So literally if you jay-walk you are a terrorist. Any one of us is in danger of being declared a terrorist at any time. When the government considers its entire population to be the enemy there is a term for that -- a police state. None of this stuff is a coincidence. Start getting informed about this stuff so that you know how to protect yourself.

Who doesn't like basketball?

[happymedium]

FTA:

We will be describing this new effort as "Basketball"

Basketball??? Does this remind anyone else of Rumsfeld's assertion that we should no longer refer to the insurgents as "insurgents?" And the subsequent joke that W. would rename the deficit "cake." Because, really, who doesn't like cake?

It's as though Orwell suddenly took an absurd turn... next, we'll see the Department of Tennis, the Department of Impressionist Paintings, &c. &c.; the former will run Guantanamo Bay, the latter, Abu Ghraib.