Big Brother Is Watching, EVERYTHING: 'Total Information Awareness' Almost Ready

Say goodbye to the fourth amendment

Amendment IV:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

http://www.archives.gov

Pentagon Readies Massive Spying System

WASHINGTON - To thwart terrorists, the Pentagon is developing a computer surveillance system that would give U.S. agents fingertip access to government and commercial records from around the world that could fill the Library of Congress more than 50 times.

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The prospect of what the Pentagon calls the Total Information Awareness system has alarmed privacy advocates on both ends of the political spectrum. In February, Congress barred use of the still-to-be-developed system against American citizens and ordered a full description of the plans developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. That report was to be delivered to Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

Also Tuesday, the Center for Democracy and Technology, a group that advocates online privacy, was giving a House Judiciary subcommittee a report that concluded, "There are few legal constraints on government access to commercial databases." Neither the Privacy Act nor the Constitution protect consumer data held by private companies, and other laws "are riddled with exceptions for law enforcement or intelligence uses."

The center's executive director, Jim Dempsey, said in prepared testimony, "Since 9/11, the FBI is authorized by the attorney general to go looking for information about individuals with no reason to believe they are engaged in, or planning, or connected to any wrongdoing.

http://story.news.yahoo.com

click 'Read More' (below) for other articles...

WIRED News: A Spy Machine of Darpa's Dreams

A Spy Machine of Darpa's Dreams

By Noah Shachtman

02:00 AM May. 20, 2003 PT

It's a memory aid! A robotic assistant! An epidemic detector! An all-seeing, ultra-intrusive spying program!

The Pentagon is about to embark on a stunningly ambitious research project designed to gather every conceivable bit of information about a person's life, index it and make it searchable.

-snip-

The embryonic LifeLog program would dump everything an individual does into a giant database: every e-mail sent or received, every picture taken, every Web page surfed, every phone call made, every TV show watched, every magazine read.

MORE AT:
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,58909,00.html

Pentagon System Hopes to Identify Walks

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0519-07.htm

WASHINGTON -- Watch your step! The Pentagon is developing a radar-based device that can identify people by the way they walk, for use in a new antiterrorist surveillance system. Operating on the theory that an individual's walk is as unique as a signature, the Pentagon has financed a research project at the Georgia Institute of Technology that has been 80 to 95 percent successful in identifying people.

If the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, orders a prototype, the individual "gait signatures" of people could become part of the data to be linked together in a vast surveillance system the Pentagon agency calls Total Information Awareness.

That system already has raised privacy alarms on both ends of the political spectrum, and Congress in February barred its use against American citizens without further congressional review.

Nevertheless, government documents reviewed by The Associated Press show that scores of major defense contractors and prominent universities applied last year for the first research contracts to design and build the surveillance and analysis system

more...
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0519-07.htm

TIA changes name, but not mission

There have been several stories relating to the TIA today, but this one asserts that DARPA is changing the name to "Terrorist Information Awareness" but it seems from the details that nothing else will change. The database proposed is far, far larger than is necessary to track 20-30,000 terrorists worldwide:

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGA72EJ9YFD.html

Alarm at Pentagon's email snooping

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,960118,00.html

Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Wednesday May 21, 2003
The Guardian

"....Civil liberties groups raised their concerns yesterday about the Pentagon's plans for cyber-surveillance systems which would give the government access to private emails and medical, education, travel and financial records. The fears were expressed as the defence department reported on its plans for the total information awareness (Tia) programme.
The project is the brainchild of the Pentagon's defence advanced research projects agency (Darpa) and would significantly expand the areas of private life into which the authorities could go. In February, Congress asked Darpa for a report on the project.

Defence contractors and universities have already applied for potential contracts to develop the programme in anticipation of it receiving approval.

Tia is based on the notion, promoted by the retired admiral John Poindexter, that terrorists will be engaged in a series of transactions involving finances, communications and travel plans that will enable them to be tracked down if sufficient data is accessed.

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