SOS2008 said:
A review of what you've said...
We got way off topic there and I'm not going to continue that. I'm going to go back to the beginning and get us on point here, because the problem with this thread - this issue - is that the fear is based on a
lack of information that fed unwarranted speculation. To be more specific, my earlier objection to speculating about what type of information would/could be collected appears to be correct. I have done some research and the things listed in the OP are largely a product of the imagination of a New York Times opinion columnist and various political figures. Part of the problem is the name provokes the imagination - when people see "total information awareness" they think that it is going to include all of the information that exists anywhere. This is false. Not only were things like phone calls (the content, not the records) and medical records never mentioned by those on the project, they were very specific in pointing out that all examples they gave were just hypotheticals. Ie, the project was in the development stage and
they hadn't even figured out yet what information they would/could collect. They were also specific in pointing out that they were not recommending any changes to any relevant laws.
http://www.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/" You need a password (free), but the relevant portions are:
As the director of the effort, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, has described the system in Pentagon documents and in speeches, it will provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access to information from Internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents, without a search warrant.
I've bolded the parts where it talks about the information. This information is factual in nature, but factual in that it was stated in speaches as
hypothetical examples. Whether or not that information could have or would have actually been included is unknown to
anyone right now - even to those who worked on the project, because it was still early in development. Also:
Admiral Poindexter, who has described the plan in public documents and speeches but declined to be interviewed, has said that the government needs to "break down the stovepipes" that separate commercial and government databases, allowing teams of intelligence agency analysts to hunt for hidden patterns of activity with powerful computers.
"We must become much more efficient and more clever in the ways we find new sources of data, mine information from the new and old, generate information, make it available for analysis, convert it to knowledge, and create actionable options," he said in a speech in California earlier this year.
Again, he's talking in generalities and stating a personal opinion (also of note, he's focusing on electronic data, not things like phone conversations). He's pushing his project, but that doesn't make even his speculation a reality.
In order to deploy such a system, known as Total Information Awareness, new legislation would be needed, some of which has been proposed by the Bush administration in the Homeland Security Act that is now before Congress. That legislation would amend the Privacy Act of 1974, which was intended to limit what government agencies could do with private information.
This quote is key: it points out that new legislation would be required, some of which has already passed in the Homeland Security Act, but in doing so, it makes the reader aware that the system has not been deployed, the necessary legislation has not been passed, and therefore,
the scope has not been pinned-down.
An F.B.I. official, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified, said the bureau had had preliminary discussions with the Pentagon about the project but that no final decision had been made about what information the F.B.I. might add to the system.
Straightforward - again, what information would be in the system (in this case, from the FBI) had not been pinned down.
The site linked in the OP references http://www.prisonplanet.com/you_are_a_suspect.html" editorial, published the week after the NYT initially broke the story, as its source of the claim of what would be covered. Among other things, it says:
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."
Where does he get these from?
He makes them up. (he's allowed to do that: it's an
opinion piece.) How do I know this? Because, his only source of information at that point was the speeches by Poindexter. But this is what was picked up - and even expanded on - by the conspiracy theory sites. After the story broke, Poindexter didn't give any interviews, but one underling clarified what was going on in http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1202/121202h1.htm" quote:
Poindexter has repeatedly refused to grant interviews to the news media. However, his deputy, Robert Popp, has spoken to journalists and at public gatherings. He has emphasized that DARPA isn't building a machine to search information, but is testing the technological viability of the concept using fictional or legally obtained data. Additionally, Popp said, the agency is building privacy protections into the system's design, looking for ways to encrypt data so that only authorized people could see the name of a person associated with a piece of information.
Once DARPA's research is complete - probably in about three years - the agency would share the plans with agencies interested in using the system, Popp said. Likely interested parties would include the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security Department and National Security Agency. [emphasis added]
So at the point when the story initially broke, TIA was little more than a
research program with no privacy implications
yet.
By January of '03, Congressmen (from both sides of the aisle) were pontificating about the evils of the program. They demanded the DoD submit a report elaborating on what the program was. It was submitted in May of '03 and again, while it used hypothetical examples, it gave no specifcs about what would actually be collected
because there were no specifics to give. In addition, it again pointed out that it was not proposing any additional legislation (HSA wasn't passed for the sake of TIA, but had implicationsn for it) - it was simply too early to even consider the question of what to collect. Unfortunately, I can't find the report itself, but many articles reference it. http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,58936,00.html" is one such article. One relevant point:
The report is disappointing -- after more than a hundred pages, you don't know anything more about whether TIA will work or whether your civil liberties will be safe against it," said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "DARPA is constantly trying to assuage privacy concerns. Their mantra is, 'We always operate within current law.'"
And again, there is a reason why that is so:
the specific information that they want to know does not exist yet. The point of an R&D program is to find out if it'll work. After that, they can figure out how to deploy it. The project hadn't even completed that first step by that time.
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So, with all those facts laid out, I will reiterate my earlier opinion, with some minor modifications (mostly that it is better substantiated than it was before so I can be more forceful in my wording):
1. The privacy concerns here are largely a product of people's imaginations. Worse, many people are reading opinions and taking them as facts - partially due to the way the news is reported and then re-reported and re-reported in a whisper-down-the-lane fashion where the distinction between opinion and fact is lost.
2. Imagined or not, the privacy concerns need to be paid attention to and the program needs to be monitored. I considered leaving this one out since it is almost uselessly general (
every program needs to be monitored, of course), but left it in for clarity.
3. In its current (at the time it was canceled - I'm not sure of the current status), unfinished form as a research project there is nothing at all wrong with this program. It should be researched, and after it is deterimined if the general idea can work, it can be determined what specific types of information would work (ie, they may find that phone records were helpful but emails were not).
Then they can submit a report on that and let Congress debate the
real intent of the program instead of the imagined/hypothetical intent.
4.
If the acquired data would have privacy implications (ie, adding airline reservations to the database would, adding your police record to the database would not), these could be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
