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Pentagon renames total information awareness Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2003/05/21/build/world/n-44-terrorost-watch.inchttp://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2003/05/21/build/world/n-44-terrorost-watch.inc
Pentagon renames terrorist watch system
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon assured Congress that its planned anti-terror surveillance system will only analyze legally acquired information and changed the name of the project to help allay privacy concerns that prompted congressional restrictions.
The Total Information Awareness program now under development by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, will henceforth be named the Terrorism Information Awareness program.
In report ordered by Congress 90 days ago, DARPA said the old name "created in some minds the impression that TIA was a system to be used for developing dossiers on U.S. citizens. That is not DoD's (Department of Defense's) intent in pursuing this program."
Rather the goal is "to protect U.S. citizens by detecting and defeating foreign terrorist threats before an attack" and the new name was chosen "to make this objective absolutely clear."
While the name changed, the description of the program being developed remained essentially the same. DARPA did, however, emphasize that it has let contracts to enhance privacy and security protections for personal data analyzed by U.S. agents who might ultimately use the software tools that are being tested or are under development.
During research and testing, DARPA is "only using data and information that is either foreign intelligence and counter intelligence information legally obtained and usable by the federal government or wholly synthetic (artificial) data that has been generated, for research purposes only, to resemble ... real-world patterns of behavior."
Looking ahead to the possible implementation of the system by various U.S. counter intelligence agencies and policy-makers, DARPA did not propose any changes in the laws regulating government access to databases full of information about private commercial transactions, like airplane ticket purchases or apartment rentals.
But DARPA noted that some current laws governing some categories of private information "may well constrain or ... completely preclude deployment of TIA search tools with respect to some data." The agency did not specify which data-mining software tools or private databases would fall into this forbidden category.
A coalition of eight advocacy groups that spanned the political spectrum from left to right criticized the report for leaving questions unanswered, particularly about how the system would deal with errors in the databases it searches. They called on Congress to continue strict scrutiny of the project.
"The government can't expect us to forget everything they've said before about this program just by changing its name," said Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union. He said the name switch was reminiscent of George Orwell's novel, "1984," about a totalitarian government.
The eight groups were the ACLU, People for the American Way, Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Democracy and Technology on the left of center and, to the right of center, the American Conservative Union, Americans for Tax Reform, Eagle Forum and Free Congress Foundation.
Copyright © 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.
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