Cancelled TIA project is on-going.

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In summary, the Total Information Awareness project was on-going, but was shut down two years ago. It is the lead story for 2/27 on Democracy Now, which can be viewed in streaming video format or listened to as an audio stream.
  • #1
turbo
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"Cancelled" TIA project is on-going.

The Total Information Awareness program (John Poindexter's project to gather all personal and public information about us in one huge database) was officially shut down two years ago. Unfortunately, the spy guys simply changed the name of the project and moved it to the NSA where it is beyond Congressional oversight. It is the lead story for 2/27 on Democracy Now, which can be viewed in streaming video format or listened to as an audio stream.

http://www.democracynow.org/

I had posted this earlier, but fell afoul of some new forum rules, so the thread was locked. I will tell you why I think this TIA business is a terrible thing - knowledge is power, and by gathering all public and personal (including medical, financial, telephone, movie rental, etc) records about every American citizen, our government is building the most seductive tool that a would-be tyrant could ever want to use against his "enemies". Dick Nixon would not have hesitated to use such knowledge to ruin the people who disagreed with him, and I have no confidence that members of the current administration or future administrations will be able to resist the temptation to turn this information to their personal advantage.
 
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  • #2
In a society who'se criminal proceedings are based on the premise of "innocent until proven guilty," I find it difficult to accept as a basis for shutting down this project the assumption that someone somewhere sometime will use this data for personal political subterfuge. Shutting down the project requires going a step further to assume that a crime will even be committed. If we were to base laws or security decisions on such premises, we'd allow no instruments of any kind capable of being used in a crime.
 
  • #3
turbo-1 said:
I will tell you why I think this TIA business is a terrible thing - knowledge is power
I am going to infer that this is the point you want to make; the rest of the post is just elaborating.

There is a clear flaw in this thesis: a government must have power, otherwise it can't do anything. Without power, the government cannot:

(1) insure domestic Tranquility
(2) provide for the common defence
(3) promote general Welfare
(4) secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity

So it is futile to put forth an argument that anything is bad simply because it gives the government power. The argument has to be more nuanced than that.

Your elaboration seems to suggest that you did, in fact, mean to put forth a more nuanced thesis, but I can't decide precisely what that was, so I'll let you explain before I comment more on it.
 
  • #4
russ_watters said:
In a society who'se criminal proceedings are based on the premise of "innocent until proven guilty," I find it difficult to accept as a basis for shutting down this project the assumption that someone somewhere sometime will use this data for personal political subterfuge. Shutting down the project requires going a step further to assume that a crime will even be committed. If we were to base laws or security decisions on such premises, we'd allow no instruments of any kind capable of being used in a crime.
Congress shut the program down because the potential for misuse was tremendous and there were no safeguards in place to prevent misuse. The Bush administration once again defied Congress and simply moved the project to the NSA where Congressional oversight is impossible. You may think that "National Security" trumps all individual rights, including the right to privacy. I do not. This administration hollers about "national security" and "terrorism" every time that they want to explain away some activity that reduces our personal freedoms, and it is time that they are taken to task for their lies.
 
  • #5
turbo-1 said:
You may think that "National Security" trumps all individual rights, including the right to privacy. I do not. This administration hollers about "national security" and "terrorism" every time that they want to explain away some activity that reduces our personal freedoms, and it is time that they are taken to task for their lies.
Ye gads; I thought this was a thread about TIA!
 
  • #6
Hurkyl said:
Your elaboration seems to suggest that you did, in fact, mean to put forth a more nuanced thesis, but I can't decide precisely what that was, so I'll let you explain before I comment more on it.
Let's pretend that you want to run for Congress, and the current administration (at that time) wants to make sure that you lose. They let you alone as you win the primary, then just before election day when there is no chance of a replacement, they start releasing information about you that would erode your support with some groups. The information might be:
1) you rented porn at the video store
2) you were treated for a sexually-transmitted disease (your wife may or may not have know about that one)
3) you are deeply in debt
4) you were a suspect in a criminal case (cleared or not)
5) you are taking anti-depressive drugs
6) you called phone-sex lines or bookmakers
7) you are taking prescription drugs that are specific to a disease that could be fatal to you in short order
8) you were busted for possession of pot in high school

I could go on and on, but surely now you get the point. Information is power and all that information about everybody in the US is going to be misused. I don't want any administration to have this kind of power, certainly not this one that claims to be above US and international law because "we are at war".
 
  • #7
turbo-1 said:
I could go on and on, but surely now you get the point.
You're saying "Somebody could do something bad". But so what? People could do bad things before TIA too. So no, I don't get your point. (Because I'm going to assume that you don't mean to argue something so utterly trivial)
 
  • #8
Hurkyl said:
You're saying "Somebody could do something bad". But so what? People could do bad things before TIA too. So no, I don't get your point. (Because I'm going to assume that you don't mean to argue something so utterly trivial)
No, I am not saying "Somebody could do something bad" I am saying that somebody will misuse the data gathered by this program for personal and/or political gain. The Republican-dominated Congress knew this and tried to shut down TIA. The administration did not want to give up this program, so they hid it and kept it running.
 
  • #9
turbo-1 said:
I am saying that somebody will misuse the data gathered by this program for personal and/or political gain.
"will" vs "could" doesn't make any difference to my previous post.
 
  • #10
In a society who'se criminal proceedings are based on the premise of "innocent until proven guilty," I find it difficult to accept as a basis for shutting down this project the assumption that someone somewhere sometime will use this data for personal political subterfuge. Shutting down the project requires going a step further to assume that a crime will even be committed. If we were to base laws or security decisions on such premises, we'd allow no instruments of any kind capable of being used in a crime.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that. :uhh: Maybe we should just use all the data to extrapolate when crimes will occur and arrest people beforehand.

Chris Mathews gave a talk at my school one day, and someone asked him a question, "what if they government kept track of who you voted for to stop things like the florida voting from happening again. He said no, that's the last thing you want. If someone were to get ahold of that kind of information they would own you.

I heard the report on my way home in the car today. God they need to fire Amy Goodman, what a horrid reporter. That lady absolutely stinks. She is too liberal for anyones taste.
 
  • #11
Hurkyl said:
I repeat, so what?
If the Republican administration uses this information to cement their hold on government, we will no longer have a representative government, but a police state run by a single party. That is a very real possibility. With Bush's approval ratings in the dumpster, the people pulling his strings will do whatever they can to ensure Republican victories in the upcoming mid-terms. This administration has told us (and shown us) that they can disobey any law they find inconvenient, so why do you think that they will "play nice" with this massive data-mining operation?
 
  • #12
turbo-1 said:
why do you think that they will "play nice" with this massive data-mining operation?
I never said, or even suggested that. (Or its negation)

What I did not want to do was to put words in your mouth. And it's a good thing I didn't, because I would not have guessed you were trying to argue a conspiracy theory.

I was expecting something more reasonable, like an attempt to argue that the justice system would be powerless to respond to misuse of power. Of course, I don't know upon what such an argument could be based, but still, it was along the lines of where I thought this was going.
 
  • #13
Hurkyl said:
I was expecting something more reasonable, like an attempt to argue that the justice system would be powerless to respond to misuse of power. Of course, I don't know upon what such an argument could be based, but still, it was along the lines of where I thought this was going.
Congress shut the program down and the administration simply put it somewhere where Congressional oversight is restricted and kept it going. This is a blatant violation of all our rights and of the authority of Congress. The administration is already usurping Judicial powers - continuing warrantless searching and wiretapping without the approval of the FISA court. Our government was designed to have a balance of power, not a presidential dictator who regards our laws as "suggestions" and our courts as mere hindrances to his personal programs.
 
  • #14
So this isn't supposed to be a thread about TIA at all then? It's supposed to be for Bush-bashing?
 
  • #15
Hurkyl said:
So this isn't supposed to be a thread about TIA at all then? It's supposed to be for Bush-bashing?
You may look at the original (locked) thread and see for yourself that I intended for the thread to concentrate on the problem about the continuance of TIA. The "Bush-bashing" is simple pragmatism, and is engendered by your credulous attitude that "it's OK because the Bush administration is doing it for us". Our government is being hijacked and our rights and privacy are being stolen, and all you can say is "so what?" This is pretty scary. How many other people are willing to sacrifice their privacy to a political organization and just trust them to watch over us? Not me, and by the way I vote for Republicans about as often as I vote for Democrats. I am far more fiscally conservative than any of our elected officials and probably far more socially liberal than them, too. I do not want ANY administration to have unfettered access to the TIA data. There are creeps in both parties.
 
  • #16
russ_watters said:
In a society who'se criminal proceedings are based on the premise of "innocent until proven guilty," I find it difficult to accept as a basis for shutting down this project the assumption that someone somewhere sometime will use this data for personal political subterfuge. Shutting down the project requires going a step further to assume that a crime will even be committed. If we were to base laws or security decisions on such premises, we'd allow no instruments of any kind capable of being used in a crime.

While I won't agree that this program will lead to a single-party system in the future (I honestly cannot see the logic there), there is plenty of precedent in constitutional law for intentionally limiting the power of government to ensure that the potential for misuse is not there. Even outside of the government, plenty of agencies do this. A better example than outlawing weapons is outlawing monopolies. Sure, there is no guarantee that a company with a monopoly will price-gouge or make poor products (and we could just outlaw price-gouging or the creation of poor products), but we'd rather not allow the necessary infrastructure that allows such abuse in the first place to come about.

Especially in the case of a government, it's very difficult to take away its powers once they've been abused. This is the same reason I'm against the broad interpretation of the interstate commerce clause. Sure, it's allowed Congress to do plenty of great things like passing civil rights legislation and fair labor laws, but it also sets up the infrastructure (gives them the power) to do many bad things. I often quote this piece from an article on Frank Herbert:

That is, he observed that people seem to have an inbuilt hunger for a powerful, charismatic leader to whom we can surrender our responsibility for making difficult decisions. Hebert observed that even the best leaders are humans, those humans have flaws, and elevating any man to a position of god-like power tends to magnify those human flaws to dangerous proportions. Worse, even if the original leader resists the temptation to abuse power, the bureaucracy which springs up around him will outlive him, and over time a bureaucracy becomes more and more incented to prioritize its own needs over the needs of people.

Obviously, this is talking about a dictator, but the principle is the same. Giving too much power to a bureaucracy, even an initially benevolent bureaucracy, almost always leads to an abuse of power at some point, simply because bureaucracies tend to attract people who want power for the sake of power. I'll freely admit that I can post no concrete evidence that anything of this nature will take place, or is even highly probable, but given that the people placed in charge of projects like these are not elected, and often operate with minimal oversight, the best way to keep them in check is to minimize the power that anyone bureaucracy has (or even any two or three bureaucracies with identical interests).

All of this said, I'm arguing on an entirely academic level at this point. From what I can see, Shane Harris didn't give any evidence that TIA has simply changed names and lives on - he simply said it was so. Furthermore, since TIA didn't seem to gather any new information - it just collected all of the existing information in one place - I'm not sure it even increases the power of any government agency. It simply increases the speed and efficiency of their data retrieval; as far as I know, they already can obtain any of this information if they wish to. This just gives them a database to access that information faster.
 
  • #17
Cyrus said:
Yeah, keep telling yourself that. Maybe we should just use all the data to extrapolate when crimes will occur and arrest people beforehand.
That seems infact to be the very reasoning of the argument put forth in this thread. "Someone will commit a crime and so this program is criminal!" (a paraphrase ofcourse)
Maybe you can see now why Hurkyl would like a more concise argument instead of ranting?
 
  • #18
Whaa? What are you talking about.
 
  • #19
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_information_awareness
Here's a Wiki article on the project by the way.
It states that the program was more or less shot and that the software was transferred to the NSA and then supposedly transferred again to the Disruptive Technology Office.
I'm currently looking for something that explains the purpose of the DTO but haven't had much luck so far. All I've found is that they are involved in research and development.
 
  • #20
cyrusabdollahi said:
I heard the report on my way home in the car today. God they need to fire Amy Goodman, what a horrid reporter. That lady absolutely stinks. She is too liberal for anyones taste.
Is she liberal or perhaps just apolitical? There is a big difference. I've got a feeling that if any government started wielding undue influence (to the detriment of the citizenry) she would jump into the fray.
 
  • #21
Apolitical, HAAAAAAAH! That woman is so far to the left it’s insane. It’s not just what she says, it’s how she says it. She drags her sentence and her words onnnnnnn and onnnn about the war in Iraq. It makes me wonder if she’s reporting news or just her opinion. She’s so bad I have to physically change the station to get her damn annoying voice of my head. She’s wayyyyyyy wayyyyyy biased to the left turbo-1. I'm sorry, she sucks.
 
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  • #22
Congress passed legislation in February of 2003 halting activities of the IAO pending a Congressional report of the office's activities. Action in the US Congress to attempt to halt a specific internal Department of Defense project occurs extremely rarely, underscoring the grave threat to civil liberties and privacy that many lawmakers perceive in the Information Awareness Office.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness

Shortly thereafter in May of 2003, DARPA changed the name from Total Information Awareness (TIA) to Terrorist Information Awareness (TIA)--very clever indeed--keeping the same acronym and all. :rolleyes: Aside from moving the project from the Department of Defense to the NSA, the "eye-in-pyramid" logo with the Latin motto scientia est potentia, meaning "knowledge is power" disappeared along with biographies of senior staffers. If this doesn't seem to be of much concern, it should raise the eyebrow at least a bit.

In any event, DARPA emphasized "in its report to Congress that the program is not designed to compile dossiers on US citizens, but rather to gather information on terrorist networks. Despite this name change and reassurance, the description of the program's activities remained essentially the same in the report, and critics continued to see the system as prone to massive abuses."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness

But geez, we don't know what they are really doing--do we?!

In general, with technology allowing for ever increasing capability, where is the line drawn in data collection even for private industry? As for Big Brother, I fail to see what educational transcripts, medical records, utility bills, etc. has to do with criminal or terrorist activity. What is of most interest is rule of law as it applies to the right to privacy and individual civil liberties. That one is innocent until proven guilty has already been mentioned. There also is the matter of probable cause before seeking search warrants. In other words, a citizen must be a suspect BEFORE data is collected about him/her and BEFORE activities and movement are monitored.

If data is being collected that is not directly related to "terrorist networks" then it is illegal, whether it is misused or not. As for possible misuse, of course data will be used/misused for other purposes. Especially if/when there is no oversight. Are people really so naive as to trust it won't be? Hello!
 
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  • #23
turbo-1 said:
Congress shut the program down because the potential for misuse was tremendous and there were no safeguards in place to prevent misuse.
Congress does a lot of things for mostly face-saving reasons. This one got a strong negative knee-jerk reaction, so Congress shut it down.
The Bush administration once again defied Congress and simply moved the project to the NSA where Congressional oversight is impossible.
As is his prerogative...
You may think that "National Security" trumps all individual rights, including the right to privacy.
I said nothing of the sort. In fact, that is the entire issue here: I challenge you to show how this in any way affects our right to privacy, and beyond that, define what a "right to privacy" even is (it isn't specified in the Bill of Rights).

Make your argument.
 
  • #24
cyrusabdollahi said:
Yeah, keep telling yourself that. :uhh: Maybe we should just use all the data to extrapolate when crimes will occur and arrest people beforehand.
Putting words in my mouth and formulating absurd hypotheticals does not constitute an argument.
 
  • #25
When did I put words in your mouth Russ, and when did I make an absurd hyopthetical? I was being sarcastic. :uhh: :uhh:
 
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  • #26
loseyourname said:
While I won't agree that this program will lead to a single-party system in the future (I honestly cannot see the logic there),
Because there isn't any logic there...
...there is plenty of precedent in constitutional law for intentionally limiting the power of government to ensure that the potential for misuse is not there. Even outside of the government, plenty of agencies do this. A better example than outlawing weapons is outlawing monopolies. Sure, there is no guarantee that a company with a monopoly will price-gouge or make poor products (and we could just outlaw price-gouging or the creation of poor products), but we'd rather not allow the necessary infrastructure that allows such abuse in the first place to come about.
That is all true, but my argument in all of these similar threads we've had on this is that the information we're talking about is already in the public domain (or in the case of that supermarket thing a few months ago, already in their records) so it doesn't change a whole lot. And the potential for abuse is thinner than people realize because data mining doesn't make it much easier to target specific individuals (start with the individual and look for the crime) because that is the opposite of the point of data mining. Data mining looks for crimes in mountains of data: looking for crimes (or potential crimes) by unknown individuals.

All the slander-type issues other people have brought up - they already happen because it doesn't take all that much effort to dig up most of what there is to know about someone if you already know who you are investigating.
I often quote this piece from an article on Frank Herbert:

Obviously, this is talking about a dictator, but the principle is the same. Giving too much power to a bureaucracy, even an initially benevolent bureaucracy, almost always leads to an abuse of power at some point, simply because bureaucracies tend to attract people who want power for the sake of power.
I think I have much more confidence in the robustness of the structure of our government than you - or for that matter, most of the rest of the people here. That said, most others are arguing Bush himself is the tyrant - but at the very least, I can see the logic of being afraid of future tyrants. I just don't see the risk as being a fraction of what people are saying it is.
All of this said, I'm arguing on an entirely academic level at this point. From what I can see, Shane Harris didn't give any evidence that TIA has simply changed names and lives on - he simply said it was so.
That's ok - like I said in another thread, hypotheticals can be very instructive and for the sake of argument, I'm willing to assume the article is correct.
Furthermore, since TIA didn't seem to gather any new information - it just collected all of the existing information in one place - I'm not sure it even increases the power of any government agency. It simply increases the speed and efficiency of their data retrieval; as far as I know, they already can obtain any of this information if they wish to. This just gives them a database to access that information faster.
And that is pretty much my argument...
 
  • #27
cyrusabdollahi said:
When did I put words in your mouth Russ, and when did I make an absurd hyopthetical? I was being sarcastic. :uhh: :uhh:
Sarcastic or not (sarcastic, meaning you know it was absurd...), the second sentence was both, considering that it followed a personal comment about me. Clearly it was meant to imply that that is the direction I would (or my ideas would) take things.
 
  • #28
SOS2008 said:
There also is the matter of probable cause before seeking search warrants. In other words, a citizen must be a suspect BEFORE data is collected about him/her and BEFORE activities and movement are monitored.
Search warrants, as you must know, do not apply to information that is voluntarily given and/or in the public domain. Those cops sitting on the side of the road with radar detectors and the ones watching the cameras at the mall have no search warrant and no probable cause - they are simply trolling for information that is in the public domain.

That is the key to this issue, and you guys know it and ignore it every time we discuss it. If there is no search there is no unreasonable search and siesure. If there is no increase in the scope of data available, there is no decrease in privacy. All that is changing is the way already available information is analyzed.
 
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  • #29
TheStatutoryApe said:
That seems infact to be the very reasoning of the argument put forth in this thread. "Someone will commit a crime and so this program is criminal!" (a paraphrase ofcourse)
Nice catch! Ironic.
 
  • #30
Sarcastic or not (sarcastic, meaning you know it was absurd...), the second sentence was both, considering that it followed a personal comment about me. Clearly it was meant to imply that that is the direction I would (or my ideas would) take things.

A comment about you? When did I say it was your view? By we I meant the government's use of the data, so clearly it was not directed at you. Did you read turbo-1 post #6? How are you comparing that to a mall security? Are your medical files already available information? Thank god mine are not.

"If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you:
"Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend -- all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as 'a virtual, centralized grand database.'

"To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you -- passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance -- and you have the supersnoop's dream: a "Total Information Awareness" about every U.S. citizen.

"This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario. It is what will happen to your personal freedom in the next few weeks if John Poindexter gets the unprecedented power he seeks."

Look who is heading this program, a guy who went to jail for abusing his powers in the Iran-contra scandal. Look at what's going on right now with the administration and the Illegal wire tappings. And you want to honestly sit there and tell me they will play by the rules?
 
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  • #31
The NSA data mining has turned into a $40 billion per year example of mission creep.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/RL31798.pdf

We have wide open borders and these guys want to play electronic games. We are strip searching little old ladies at airports, yet we would allow a country known to support terrorists to operate our ports.

This is all Bizarre , totally Bizarre.
 
  • #32
After reading what everyone has had to say, and what the article in the opening post had to say, I have two main concerns.

The first is what data is included in such a database (assuming it does still exist and hasn't just been moved to secure the program or to sanitize the hard drives the initial data was collected on). Russ, you're arguing that the data is already publicly available. However, in the opening post, the article makes reference to information such as medical records, which are NOT publicly available (something that is being even more tightly regulated by HIPAA, which I know because I'm currently being frustrated by a change in email policy at the medical school to ensure no patient data gets publicly distributed, or even left on a hard drive that leaves the medical campus, even though I have nothing to do with that data). If the only data collected is that which is already publicly available, frankly, I don't care if someone learned how many rolls of toilet paper I just bought by sitting in the store and watching or by getting it off the store computers that record the purchases linked to my little shopping discount card. But, if they are collecting data that would ordinarily require a search warrant, and should not be publicly available, such as medical records, then that's none of the government's business, and collection of such data should be clearly prohibited.

The second issue I have is the security of such data. I'm less concerned with a corrupt government trying to blackmail me based on how much toilet paper I buy, or other information they could have gotten with or without the database, and am more concerned with the fact that it puts ALL that information in one place that would be a very tempting target for quite a few criminals interested in things like identity theft. The more you know about someone, and the easier it is to gather all that information in one place, the easier it is to pull off an identity theft type crime. All it would take is one hacker or one corrupt insider just one step ahead of the security measures in place, which, given the whims of government funding, might only take one budget cut to not bother updating security measures on that database in a timely manner. Once they have that data and distribute it, there's no getting it back, even if you arrest the person who initially obtained it. And having so much data in one place rather than having to scrounge for it all over the place just makes it far too tempting of a target for the criminally-minded.

SOS, just to quickly address the search warrant/ probable cause issue, probable cause IS publicly available data; it's any data about a person and their actions that can be gathered by observation of them and evidence left out in public or at a crime scene, as opposed to found on their private property. The search warrant based on that probable cause is used to further search on their private property. So, if a store owner has information in their computer about what your recent purchases are, and they agree to share that information with the police/government, there's nothing illegal about it. If the store owner refuses to share that information, however, then a search warrant or subpoena would be required to obtain it from them. So, what data could be collected without any warrants would depend on how willing people who own the property where it's stored are to share it. If large corporations decided they could make a small fortune selling their data to the government, they can do that and haven't broken any laws.
 
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  • #33
Moonbear said:
The first is what data is included in such a database (assuming it does still exist and hasn't just been moved to secure the program or to sanitize the hard drives the initial data was collected on). Russ, you're arguing that the data is already publicly available. However, in the opening post, the article makes reference to information such as medical records, which are NOT publicly available (something that is being even more tightly regulated by HIPAA, which I know because I'm currently being frustrated by a change in email policy at the medical school to ensure no patient data gets publicly distributed, or even left on a hard drive that leaves the medical campus, even though I have nothing to do with that data).
The question of what data, specifically, will be part of such a database is perhaps the biggest question mark in this issue. But given the inflammatory nature of such articles, and barring some real hard information on what data will be included, I find no reason to accept that something that is currently confidential, such as medical records, could possibly be part of such a database. And as a pracitcal matter, no court would ever rule that it would be acceptable to do that. So yes, I am operating on the assumption that all the data used will be either public domain or "voluntarily" offered (in quotes because - let's face it - we give info all the time that we don't really want to). But I consider it a reasonable assumption. And yes, if the assumption proves to be false, my argument/position must/will change.
If the only data collected is that which is already publicly available, frankly, I don't care if someone learned how many rolls of toilet paper I just bought by sitting in the store and watching or by getting it off the store computers that record the purchases linked to my little shopping discount card. But, if they are collecting data that would ordinarily require a search warrant, and should not be publicly available, such as medical records, then that's none of the government's business, and collection of such data should be clearly prohibited.
And I agree.

For your second issue, the security issue, sure it is a concern, but ehh - we all use banks and all of our money exists only as bits of data floating around in cyberspace already.
 
  • #34
But given the inflammatory nature of such articles, and barring some real hard information on what data will be included, I find no reason to accept that something that is currently confidential, such as medical records, could possibly be part of such a database. And as a pracitcal matter, no court would ever rule that it would be acceptable to do that.

This sounds like repeating history with the FISA incident. The courts said no, bush thought he was above the law, and went around the courts back. What's different here? Nothing.
 
  • #35
The National Security Agency (NSA) visited Silicon Valley this month on the hunt for private sector technology to beef up its already formidable snooping and signals intelligence portfolio. Data mining technologies to search for connections between seemingly unrelated snippets of information was top of the NSA's shopping list, according to venture capitalists who held meetings with agency officials.

The New York Times reports that the agency is hunting for technology that fits with its increased emphasis on scanning millions of ordinary Americans' phone calls and emails for 'suspicious' patterns. "The theory is that the automated tool that is conducting the search is not violating the law. [But] anytime a tool or a human is looking at the content of your communication, it invades your privacy," Mark D Rasch, former head of computer-crime investigations for the Justice Department and current SVP of computer security firm Solutionary, said.

If NSA is using or plans to use ,off the shelf private sector technology, there will be a good chance that a lot of personal information will be collected and possibly lost to God only knows who.

They already have the phone lines covered and that of course will mean faxes, like when your doctor faxes your medical records to another doctor. With the new data mining programs they will also have access to your: credit history, credit card use, and your credit card numbers.

Xerox is supposed to be working on a program that will sort out all of this Mega information and make it usable without violating our privacy, but it still is under developement.
http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2006/02/26/nsa_in_silicon_valley.html
 
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