[Nettime-bold] Total Information Awareness

["roya.jakoby" <roya@girlfish.net>]

It was reported that Admiral John M. Poindexter, who was
convicted in the Iran-Contra affair in 1990 but later
acquitted on a technicality, joined the Bush Administration
earlier this year as head of the Office of Information
Awareness at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Poindexter is in charge of a new system called Total
Information Awareness, which would permit the military to
spy on the civilian population of the United States without
search warrants by scanning personal information such as
email, credit-card statements, banking and medical records,
and travel documents for patterns that suggest criminal or
terrorist activities. Deployment of the surveillance
technology would require new legislation, since the military
traditionally has not been allowed to spy on ordinary
American citizens. "This could be the perfect storm for
civil liberties in America," said Marc Rotenberg, director
of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, "The vehicle
is the Homeland Security Act, the technology is Darpa, and
the agency is the FBI. The outcome is a system of national
surveillance of the American public."

(as read in HARPER'S WEEKLY Newsletter, November 12, 2002)

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Harper's Magazine
http://www.harpers.org

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