February 28, 2006
Total Information Awareness returns
Total information awareness was a controversial Pentagon/Darpa intelligence gathering program which got screamed down so much over privacy issues that, even at the height of the total 9-11 hysteria Patriot Act passing frenzy, they had to back down on it – or at least, go underground for a while and return under a new name: ADVISE.
The same basic concept remains: collecting enormous amounts of data on civilians so as to know their every action and move. All for your security, of course. Reaching its theoretical zenith with the Lifelog project – a Darpa initiative described as something like “TIA cubed”, with the following admitted goals:
The embryonic LifeLog program would dump everything an individual does into a giant database: every e-mail sent or received, every picture taken, every Web page surfed, every phone call made, every TV show watched, every magazine read.
All of this — and more — would combine with information gleaned from a variety of sources: a GPS transmitter to keep tabs on where that person went, audio-visual sensors to capture what he or she sees or says, and biomedical monitors to keep track of the individual’s health.
If you have any illusion about this being benign, check out Total Information Awareness’ original, kind of more honest, masonic eye in the pyramid death ray nightmare logo
which they removed oh so very fast.
You know, we of the dancing moose barely know what to say about this sort of thing beyond pointing out that it is actually happening. The same guys who are happy to lie in order to invade another country want to know everything about what everyone in the world is doing. The same guys who provided lists of suspected communists for Indonesia to disappear in the 70’s. The same guys who, after a moment’s thought, are not nice people; nor are they our friends.
But, of course, the only way to win the long, impossible war on terror, is to know where everyone is, what they are doing, what they are planning, what they are thinking, and who they associate with. Then, only then, can we maybe be safe. We must welcome our new informational overlords! Our glorious protectors! Who create the conditions which perpetuate the conditions which create terrorists! Ahahahaha!
Filed by billy at 1:58 pm under politics,technology,the world
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