Internet Spy Scheme Invokes the Return of Big Brother

Dec. 4, 2002

It sounds like the plot of a science fiction novel or a James Bond film: A new government agency will use super computers to spy on everything you read, buy, browse on the internet, or charge on your credit card. And a federal version of Big Brother will know everything about you, from your shoe size to your taste in videos and what sort of medicine your vet is giving your cat.
In short, everything that has an electronic trail.
But the proposed “Total Information Awareness“ project is no laughing matter. It‘s a Pentagon research project, currently under development at a cost of $245 million by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the division that created the internet in the 1980s.
The project is included in the Homeland Securities Act which was approved by the House of Representatives in early November. It is covered by a provision of the Act called the Computer Security Enhancement Act, which expands the ability of law enforcement to monitor the internet.

CHILL OUT
Before you consider moving to Canada or New Zealand to safeguard your personal liberty, consider that Total Information Awareness (TIA) has generated a huge amount of public wrath. More than 30 civil liberties groups -- including those representing physicians, universities, libraries, newspapers and the internet -- have sent a letter to Senate leaders Tom Daschle and Trent Lott, demanding that the project be stopped. Major newspapers and voices on both the left and the right are in an uproar across the country.
On November 14, the respected conservative columnist William Safire blasted the TIA project in a column that is currently being e-mailed around the nation.
“If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you,“ Safire warned.
“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.“
Safire went on to blast the TIA as a threat to freedom which would “create computer dossiers on 300 million Americans.“ He also noted that it would undermine the Freedom of Information Act, which protects American citizens by allowing them to discover the extent of government snooping in their lives.
From the left, columnist Molly Ivans wrote a piece entitled “Scary Times in the USA,“ which noted that electronic snooping would be conducted without a search warrant, a violation of the Fourth Amendment as well as the Privacy Act of 1974, “which was intended to limit what government agencies can do with personal information.“
And that‘s not all: “Transactional data“ involving your financial, medical and governmental records will be cross-referenced with “biometric data“ such as your fingerprints for your electronic file in Washington, D.C.

DARTH VADER
Heading up the TIA project is the controversial Admiral John Poindexter, director of DARPA‘s Information Awareness Office.
Poindexter masterminded Iran-Contra, the biggest scandal of the Reagan administration, in which missiles and other weapons were secretly sold to Iran in exchange for U.S. hostages captured at the American Embassy in Tehran during the revolution of 1979. Funds from the illegal arms sales were then funneled to the Contra counter-revolutionaries in Nicaragua -- again illegally and against the wishes of Congress.
After the scandal died down, Poindexter wound up conceiving the idea of the TIA as a way to capture the “information signature“ of terrorists and criminals by collecting as much electronic information as possible and then sifting through the data with super computers. Similar computer programs have been in use for more than a decade by the C.I.A. and Israel‘s Mossad secret service to track the financial and legal transactions of terrorists and criminals.
Over the past few weeks, Poindexter has been lambasted as sort of a Darth Vader of the Internet. “Poindexter is now realizing his 20-year dream: getting the “data-mining“ power to snoop on every public and private act of every American,“ Safire wrote.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (www.epic.org) reveals that Poindexter is also involved in another shadowy Project Genoa, which would assist the data-mining efforts of the TIA with tools which will “help analysts understand and even ‘preempt‘ future action.“
If that sounds like the plot line from the recent sci-fi film “Minority Report,“ in which psychic cops track down killers before they murder someone, then don‘t be surprised if there‘s a SWAT team in your future, should the aforementioned analysts get the wrong idea on your data.

REASON FOR CAUTION
Although Poindexter has stated that the TIA would have safeguards to protect ordinary citizens and would be used to track down only terrorists and criminals, newspaper editors across the country have noted that there are opportunities for abuse.
Here again, the thought of a TIA system gone haywire draws parallels to the sci-fi film “Brazil,“ by director Terry Gilliam, in which an out-of-control federal bureacracy brands an ordinary citizen as a terrorist after a smudge appears on one of his payroll records.
Kathleen Parker, a columnist for Tribune Media Services, said the TIA project “should send chills down Americans‘ spines,“ and wondered how long the First and Fourth Amendments of the Bill of Rights would last under such a government.
An editorial in the St. Petersburg Times commented that, “there is no proof that such a system will make us safer. We only know it will lay waste to our privacy.“
A letter to Congress from members of the ACLU commented that, “I find it disgraceful that there are government officials who think that they should treat all Americans as though they are suspects and therefore “fair game“ for government snooping and spying.“

UP TO THE SENATE
The fate of the TIA project is now in the hands of Congress. Prior to voting in favor of the Homeland Security Bill on Nov. 19, several senators vowed to review and amend the internet project, including Dianne Feinstein, Joseph Lieberman, Bob Barr, Dick Armey and Charles Grassley. Majority Leader Armey stated that the approved bill “does not authorize, fund or move into the department anything like it (TIA).“ He added that the use of internet surveillance tools in the bill are “intended solely to authorize the use of advanced techniques to sift through existing intelligence data, not to open a new method of intruding lawful, everyday transactions of American citizens.“
But whether the project is gone for good is open to debate. Consider that Americans have already exposed themselves to increased surveillance through the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act with virtually no opposition. Many in Congress reportedly voted in favor of U.S.A. PATRIOT without even reading the act.
“Incrementally, we have grown accustomed to invasions of privacy that we wouldn‘t have tolerated before Sept. 11, 2001,“ states the ACLU. “Until then, we knew what the limits of government should be.“