House vote stymies TIA spy plan (CNET News.com)

[BadGimp]

House vote stymies TIA spy plan
Last modified: September 25, 2003, 10:36 AM PDT
By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com


The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a spending bill that eliminates money for the Total Information Awareness project, effectively putting an end to the controversial Pentagon antiterrorism plan, which sought to assemble computerized dossiers on Americans.

The 407 to 15 vote on Wednesday approved a conference bill drafted by a joint House-Senate committee. The approval vote is the result of a year of fierce lobbying by privacy advocates to eliminate TIA (recently renamed "Terrorist Information Awareness") and of Pentagon efforts to defend it against mounting public and congressional criticism. Adm. John Poindexter, who ran the Defense Department's Information Awareness Office that managed the TIA project, resigned last month.

Sen. Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who led opposition to the TIA project on Capitol Hill, said in a telephone interview that the "program that would have been the biggest and most intrusive surveillance program in the history of the United States will be no more. The lights are going out at the office."

http://msnbc-cnet.com.com/2100-1029_3-5082253.html?part=msnbc-cnet&tag=alert&form=feed&subj=cnetnews
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score 1 for the good guys.

[ixion]

1. excellent...

now we just need to dump the unPATRIOTic Act and the Bush cabal, and we can start to rebuild our country.

[lightbulb]

2. This makes my day

I love it when the fascists take one in the groin. Thanks BadGimp!

[Tempest]

3. Got some bad news for you

A back door to Poindexter's Orwellian dream

By Thomas C Greene in Washington

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/33006.html

The perverse dream of integrating law enforcement, military intelligence and vast databases of virtually everything done by virtually every citizen is coming to fruition, only under state, not federal, auspices.

DARPA's dreaded Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, formerly administered by convicted felon and Republican hero John Poindexter of Iran-Contra fame, may have been de-clawed by Congress, but it lives on at the state level in an incarnation called, ominously, the MATRIX (Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange).

There's a lot to dislike in this new end-run around Congressional oversight. For one thing there are federal dollars behind it -- four million from the Department of Justice -- which makes it clear that the Feds will be expecting a payoff.

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