[governance] ACLU - US - The Return of Total Information Awareness

[Riaz K Tayob]

Snip:

Mass data from a wide variety of sources – including the private sector – is being collected 
and scanned by a secretive military spy agency. This represents nothing 
less than a major change in American life – and unless stopped the 
consequences of this system for everybody will grow in magnitude along 
with the rivers of data that are collected about each of us – and that’s 
more and more every day.

Some of the concerns include -  Snip:

* The erosion of privacy through the judicial creation of a distinction 
between content and "transactional" or "addressing" information (such as 
the recipients of e-mails or phone calls and the times and dates of each 
communication) through the Patriot Act and prior developments.

* Partnerships between government agencies and private sector entities 
to collect and monitor customers’ data and transactions.



The Return of Total Information Awareness
by ACLU
Tue Mar 11, 2008 at 12:36:22 PM PDT

By Barry Steinhardt, director the ACLU Technology and Liberty Project.

Yesterday’s report in The Wall Street Journal about the NSA’s domestic 
spy dragnets should be major, major news. It is nothing less than the 
return of TIA: "Total Information Awareness." Yet there has been barely 
any followup coverage of the story in the mainstream media. I know the 
media thinks the sexual behavior of the governor of New York is 
earth-shatteringly important for American life – but this NSA report 
actually is.

I mean, when we warn about a "surveillance society," this is what we’re 
talking about. This is it, this is the ballgame. Mass data from a wide 
variety of sources – including the private sector – is being collected 
and scanned by a secretive military spy agency. This represents nothing 
less than a major change in American life – and unless stopped the 
consequences of this system for everybody will grow in magnitude along 
with the rivers of data that are collected about each of us – and that’s 
more and more every day.

The TIA program, you may recall, was a massive Pentagon plan (run by 
Admiral John Poindexter of Iran-Contra fame) to tap into as many 
databases containing personal information about Americans as possible 
(program materials listed "Financial, Education, Travel, Medical, 
Veterinary, Country Entry, Place/Event Entry, Transportation, Housing, 
Critical Resources, Government, Communications"). All that information 
would then be pulled together and scanned for "suspicious" patterns. 
Given the density of the "data trails" that we all create in our daily 
lives today and in the future, it was a recipe for the routine 
surveillance of Americans and their every move.

TIA was supposed to have been killed off by Congress in 2003 amid 
widespread objections to its sweeping Orwellian scope. There have been 
always been hints about a secret annex to the law that permitted some 
limited aspects of TIA to operate within the Pentagon’s black budget for 
intelligence and with respect to foreigners only. Now it appears that, 
like a vampire that can’t be killed except with a stake through its 
heart, TIA has arisen again from its coffin in full body with its 
voracious appetite for privacy of Americans and foreigners alike.

The reporter on the Journal piece, Siobhan Gorman, describes stunning 
new spying capabilities that flow from a distributed collection of new 
domestic spying capabilities (each of which the ACLU has long warned 
against):

* TIA and data mining more broadly

* The NSA’s illegal wiretapping program, the so-called Terrorist 
Surveillance Program (TSP)

* The Patriot Act’s broadening of FBI power to collect third-party 
personal information without a subpoena through Section 215 searches and 
National Security Letters.

* The Treasury Department’s expanded surveillance of financial 
transactions through Cash Transaction Reporting and Suspicious Activity 
Reporting.

* The CIA’s illegitimate access to the SWIFT database to monitor 
international financial transactions.

* DHS’ efforts to increase collection and monitoring of airline 
passenger data.

* Partnerships between government agencies and private sector entities 
to collect and monitor customers’ data and transactions.

* The erosion of privacy through the judicial creation of a distinction 
between content and "transactional" or "addressing" information (such as 
the recipients of e-mails or phone calls and the times and dates of each 
communication) through the Patriot Act and prior developments.


In the ongoing battle over FISA and the NSA’s warrantless spying program 
(which appears to be but one part of this larger effort), the government 
has been saying in effect, "trust us." Why should we trust an agency 
that has been running this secret program in contravention of the Wyden 
Amendment, the law passed by Congress shutting down TIA.

It’s time for Congress to find out exactly what is going on here, inform 
the public, and put a stop to what appears to be the construction of a 
sweeping infrastructure for the routine mass surveillance of innocent 
people.




 
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