Total Information Awareness

From TinWiki.org

Total Information Awareness, or TIA, is one of many human information databasing programs created by the Defense Advanced Research Programs Agency, or DARPA. The program was first brought into the public realm of knowledge by the New York Times in November of 2002, where its main goal was reported to give law enforcement agencies the ability to access complete information profiles on any citizen without probable cause or a court-granted search warrant.

The TIA program was administered under John Poindexter's Information Awareness Office, or IAO, located in the Pentagon. The program's funding was reportedly eliminated by Congress in September 2003 amid public scrutiny and various privacy-related lawsuits.

1 Modelling a terrorist
2 An information monster?
3 See also
4 External links
5 Relevant discussions

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Modelling a terrorist

TIA goes beyond other databasing programs with its vision of creating a centralized, global information repository of any given individual or group and their actions. The database would be fed information by all currently existing transaction-type record databases, such as financial transactions, medical records, travel records, and intelligence reports.

The program's official goal was to capture the "information signature" of a given individual in "low intensity/low density" combat and crime. The information would be formed into a graphic flowchart, populated by any linked individuals, organizations, or events, forming a global information database.

Paramount to the program's operation would be a highly complex data mining tool able to recognize relevant patterns and associations within the database, giving the program the ability to mathematically "predict" future movements or actions of a given object. Several such tools already exist in part, such as Genoa and CTS, but the nature of TIA would require a utility specially tailored to sort through the monstrous amoung of information populating within the program.

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An information monster?

TIA has been cancelled, but in name only. In post-9/11 America, information hoarding is a constant among the law enforcement and intelligence communities. Other databasing tools, such as the controversial MATRIX program, are still in use today. Like the mythical hydra, the monster which responds to having a head cut off by growing two more, the elimination of such tools is countered with subtler and more secretive projects.

Like many similar programs, even the briefest existence of TIA holds deep Orwellian overtones in regards to the United States government. Its development is yet another example of government vision to not just sidestep portions of the American Constitution, but to bypass it altogether.

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