Privacy vs. Security
Total Information Awareness (TIA), initially known as a mass detection program was introduced by the United States information awareness Office in 2003 under the Bush Administration.
After the 9/11 attacks in 2001, national leaders felt that there needed to be a new proactive approach to dealing with terrorism. These new efforts, under this idea, which was adopted by the Bush Administration post 2001: that the best way to catch terrorists is to allow federal agencies to share information about American citizens and aliens that is currently stored in separate databases.
John Poindexter, head of the Pentagon's Office of Information Awareness, developed a surveillance database intended to track terror suspects. Poindexter claimed that the new TIA system will, "break down the stovepipes" that separate commercial and government databases.
In 2003, at the time this system was introduced, this was the most extensive method the government has taken to monitor the American people since the 1960s.
The T.I.A. program seeks to ''revolutionize the ability of the United States to detect, classify and identify foreign terrorists'' by developing data-mining and profiling technologies that could analyze commercial transactions and private communications. The Total Information Awareness system allows the Office of Information Awareness to access citizens' credit card purchases, travel itineraries, phone records, email, medical histories, financial information, and many more pieces of data. This program gives the government the power to generate a comprehensive data profile on any U.S. citizen.
Components of TIA:
This article discusses the various components and functions of the TIA program. These are the main roles of the system and the purposes each role serves:
- Genoa is a software program designed to analyze large amounts of data to assist human analysts.
- Genisys developed technologies for managing large amounts of data including data from unstructured sources such as the World Wide Web.
- Scalable Social Network Analysis (SSNA) focused on modeling the key characteristics of terrorist groups by using social network analysis.
- Evidence extraction and Link discovery (EELD) developed technologies for automated discovery, extraction, and linking of sparse evidence in large data sources.
- Wargaming the Asymmetric Environment (WAE) aimed to develop automated technology to identify predictive indicators of terrorist activity.
- Translingual Information Detection, Extraction, and Summarization (TIDES) worked on language processing technology for interpreting critical information in multiple languages.
- Communicator focused on developing dialogue interaction technology for warfighters to access information without a keyboard-based interface.
- Human Identification at a Distance (HumanID) developed automated biometric identification technologies for various purposes, including force protection and crime prevention.
- Bio-Surveillance aimed to predict and respond to bioterrorism by monitoring non-traditional data sources.
Media Criticism of TIA:
However, the T.I.A. program was not launched without critic. In a December 5, 2002, New York Times article, written by Jeffrey Rosen, concerns about privacy were expressed. While the Bush administration stood behind the Total Information Awareness program, privacy advocates were determined to have Congress pull the plug on this new data software.
In 1965 the National Data Center was created, which led to the passage of the Privacy Act of 1974. This act prohibited federal agencies from routinely sharing personal information.
So, the leading concern in the 2002 New York Times article was whether Americans would continue to support the Privacy Act of 1974 in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. This sparked the discussion of the balance of individual privacy and national security. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/15/magazine/the-year-in-ideas-total-information-awareness.html
TIA now:
In late 2003, congress defunded the Total Information Awareness, after media backlash against the government claiming that the government was trying to establish "Total Information Awareness" over the United States citizens.
In February 2006, it was reported that components of the TIA program were transferred to the National Security Agency (NSA).
Genoa II, a component of TIA, was renamed "Topsail" and transferred to the NSA's Advanced Research Development Activity. Topsail's tools were used in the War on Terror.
The Total Information Awareness Prototype System was renamed "basketball" and continued to be researched. In 2004, Basketball was tested in a research lab, but its status beyond 2004, remains uncertain.
My Opinion on TIA:
I think the TIA program is extremely invasive to all American Citizens. I think that TIA had the ability to possibly violate privacy rights and civil liberties, because of its purpose to collect and analyze vast amounts of personal information about U.S. citizens.
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