Were we wrong about Total Information Awareness?

[mattclearing]

Slate report: http://www.slate.com/id/2133564/

Poindexter envisioned a "privacy appliance," a device that would strip any identifiers from the information—such as names or addresses—so that government miners could see only patterns. Then if there was reason to believe that the information belonged to a group that was planning an attack, the government could seek a warrant and disable the privacy control for that specific data. TIA funded research on a privacy appliance at the Palo Alto Research Center, a subsidiary of Xerox Corp. "The idea is that this device, cryptographically protected to prevent tampering, would ensure that no one could abuse private information without an immutable digital record of their misdeeds," according to a 2003 government report to Congress about TIA. "The details of the operation of the appliance would be available to the public."

The NSA's domestic eavesdropping program, however, appears to have none of these safeguards. When Congress killed TIA's funding in 2003, it effectively ended research into privacy-protection technology. According to former officials associated with TIA, after the program was canceled, elements of it were transferred into the classified intelligence budget. But these did not include research on privacy protection.

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It seems to me that the TIA program was an attempt to legitimize the wiretapping that was already going on illegally. Of course, we didn't know at the time that the NSA was breaking the law at the behest of President Bush.

But now Bush is trying to justify breaking the law with national security, and we may never get privacy safeguards if he isn't brought to justice.

So I pose the question: Were we wrong about TIA, now that it's clear that the government was going to do it anyway, without any privacy safeguards. Seems to me if we had to choose between the two, the TIA privacy option would be best.

Of course, neither are really that great, but if the Government is going to assert that it has rightful access to electronic communications for investigative purposes either way, it would be nice if there were a good system to ensure individual privacy until investigated.

[Village Idiot]

1. TIA was NEVER killed.

The name was changed to 'Terrorist Information Awareness" and the program was changed to fall under Pentagon auspices, with war-criminal dope peddler Poindexter in charge...

[mattclearing]

2. I vaguely remember this.

I didn't think it had been killed either...simply moved out of DARPA to somewhere else. Couldn't remember, though...there's so much insanity to keep up with with these clowns.