Note: This article was edited on August 24, 2005 to make a small change and may contain a large portion of out of date information. When I get more time I will try to weed it out of the main article into the archives.

Summary:

This profiling system formerly known as Total Information Awareness is run by the Information Awareness Office under DARPA by John Poindexter is already funded by the United States Government and will correlate the data from a massive number of government and commercial databases to identify citizens engaged in suspicious activity. Some suspect it may soon be superceded by the Terrorist Threat Integration Center.

Activism:

Please urge your senators to shut down this program and help stop the government plan to mine our privacy.

October 6, 2003 - EFF concludes that even if TIA is "dead," the need for continued Congressional oversight and a strong regulatory framework remains great. See their report, Total/Terrorism Information Awareness: Is It Truly Dead?

July 22, 2003 - ACM's SIGKDD has posted a clarification to their January letter to John Warner and Carl Levin.

February 12, 2003 - Now you too can own the Total Information Awareness thong. Proceeds benefit the ACLU.

February 6, 2003 - CDT reports, "The Wyden amendment has passed the Senate, but not the House. The next big challenge is to preserve the amendment "in conference." The Senate bill must be reconciled with a House-passed spending bill that contains no provision on TIA."

January 28, 2003 - Total Information Awareness: Down, but not out by Farhad Manjoo for Salon. Congress may have put the brakes on the most ambitious government surveillance program ever. But for citizens worried about their privacy, TIA still means trouble.

January 23, 2003 - The Association for Computing Machinery wrote express some concerns about this program. The article states, "It is misleading to suggest that 'privacy enhancing technologies' within TIA can protect people's privacy, because by definition surveillance compromises privacy."

Wired News reports that fearing government snooping against ordinary Americans, U.S. senators voted Thursday to block funding for the program!

January 15, 2003 - Russ Feingold may introduce a bill today to halt Total Information Awareness. Warblogging.com has some thoughts on the matter.

January 14, 2003 - Center for Democracy and Technology, ACLU, Americans for Tax Reform, and other groups sent a letter to Congress sking for a moratorium TIA until key questions about the "datamining" initiative have been answered. More information about this letter is available on the CDT web site.

January 10, 2003 - Senators Patrick Leahy, Russel Feingold and Maria Cantwell requested detailed information from Attorney General John Ashcroft about the Justice Department's use of datamining and work with the Total Information Awareness project.

Resources:

• Total Information Awareness (TIA) Resource Center - more information and a ton of links
• EPIC's Total Information Awareness
• Warblogging.com's Fight Total Information Awareness index page.
• The Center for Democracy and Technology has established an Action Center.

Reports: (New)

• EFF REVIEW OF MAY 20 REPORT ON TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS - May 20, 2003

  The Report makes one thing quite clear: TIA is being tested on "real problems" using "real data" pertaining to U.S. persons, apparently from Defense Department (DoD) intelligence files. Otherwise, the Report doesn't shed much light on the issues thatconcern EFF.

Movies:

There's an amusing flash rendition of the perils of Total Information Awareness to share with your friends. Thanks to Vic Coffin for that link. The ACLU is also hosting a somber flash video on their site critiquing TIA.

Articles: (Please e-mail anything new to rob@vees.net)

• March 7, 2003 - On The Horizon: Your Computer Could Help Fight Terrorism by David Post for Information Week, speaks on how home computers could be used to correlate collected intelligence.
• January 6, 2003 - George Orwell, here we come by Declan McCullagh for news.com
• December 9, 2002 - Too Much Information by Hendrik Hertzberg for The New Yorker.
• December 3, 2002 - The Homeland Security Act and the proposed DARPA "Total Information Awareness" (TIA) program by Robert E. Gladd. An excellent resource and explanation.
• November 25, 2002 - Choice for 'big brother' is all wrong, Chuck says by Kenneth R. Bazinet for the NY Daily News.
• November 22, 2002 - Information Awareness Office Makes Us a Nation of Suspects by Charles V. Peña for the Cato Institute.
• November 22, 2002 - Agency Weighed, but Discarded, Plan Reconfiguring the Internet by John Markoff for the New York Times.
• November 21, 2002 - Pentagon to Track American Consumer Purchases by Major Garrett for FOX News
• November 19, 2002 - No to the privacy ploy: Proposed surveillance of Americans' personal information goes too far, an editorial from the Tullahoma News.
• November 17, 2002 - Electronic snoops will make us a society of open books by Robin E. Blumner of the St. Petersburg Times.
• November 16, 2002 - Editorial 11/16: Security and privacy by gomemphis.com Editorial staff.
• November 16, 2002 - Total Information Awareness, an editorial in the Washington Post, call many of the choices so far indicative of "serious lapse of judgement."
• November 16, 2002 - Pentagon data grab in The Age.
• November 15, 2002 - Warblogging.com updates with Total Information Awareness Marching Forward. George Paine says "you should be very scared of Total Information Awareness."
• November 14, 2002 - You Are a Suspect by William Safire of the New York Times.
• November 12, 2002 - U.S. Hopes to Check Computers Globally by Robert O'Harrow Jr. of the Washington Post.
• November 11, 2002 - Warblogging.com has a report and analysis of the Markoff article.
• November 9, 2002 - Pentagon Plans a Computer System That Would Peek at Personal Data of Americans by John Markoff of the New York Times.
• October 2002 - Artifact: No Go Logo: Creepy agency casts evil eye on Planet Earth by Jesse Walker of Reason.
• August 7, 2002 - Feds Open 'Total' Tech Spy System by Eliot Borin in Wired News.

A friend of mine has dug up more details and the test of the Senate amendment concerning the Information Awareness Office. Notables:

-The bill has a Presidential waiver provision allowing spending to move forward if and only if the President certifies that submitting such the report required by the Wyden amendment is not possible, or that STOPPING R&D for TIA would "ENDANGER NATIONAL SECURITY".

-Even if the President submits such a waiver, Congress must still give final approval for any deployment or implementation of any technology developed by TIA.

-There is a good Wired story about some of the details of the compromise reached.

-The bill requires that the DoD provide a report to Congress on the civil liberties aspects of the TIA program within 60 days in order to receive funding.

Here is the full text of the amendment (scanned 10 meg PDF file).

The press release from Senator Wyden's office with summary details of the amendment.

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