Total Information Awareness
Total Information Awareness (TIA) was a mass detection program by the United States Information Awareness Office. It operated under this title from February to May 2003 before being renamed Terrorism Information Awareness.[1][2]
Not to be confused with the fictional system portrayed in The Last Enemy (TV series).
Based on the concept of predictive policing, TIA was meant to correlate detailed information about people in order to anticipate and prevent terrorist incidents before execution.[3] The program modeled specific information sets in the hunt for terrorists around the globe.[4] Admiral John Poindexter called it a "Manhattan Project for counter-terrorism".[5] According to Senator Ron Wyden, TIA was the "biggest surveillance program in the history of the United States".[6]
Congress defunded the Information Awareness Office in late 2003 after media reports criticized the government for attempting to establish "Total Information Awareness" over all citizens.[7][8][9]
Although the program was formally suspended, other government agencies later adopted some of its software with only superficial changes. TIA's core architecture continued development under the code name "Basketball". According to a 2012 New York Times article, TIA's legacy was "quietly thriving" at the National Security Agency (NSA).[10]
Criticism[edit]
Critics allege that the program could be abused by government authorities as part of their practice of mass surveillance in the United States. In an op-ed for The New York Times, William Safire called it "the supersnoop's dream: a Total Information Awareness about every U.S. citizen".[8]
Hans Mark, a former director of defense research and engineering at the University of Texas, called it a "dishonest misuse of DARPA".[1]
The American Civil Liberties Union launched a campaign to terminate TIA's implementation, claiming that it would "kill privacy in America" because "every aspect of our lives would be catalogued".[54] The San Francisco Chronicle criticized the program for "Fighting terror by terrifying U.S. citizens".[55]
Still, in 2013 former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied about a massive data collection on US citizens and others.[56] Edward Snowden said that because of Clapper's lie he lost hope to change things formally.[56]
In popular culture[edit]
In the 2008 British television series The Last Enemy, TIA is portrayed as a UK-based surveillance database that can be used to track and monitor anybody by putting all available government information in one place.