Huntingdon College: program in Political Science and Public Affairs:
Total Information Awareness System

compiled by Jeremy Lewis, PhD, revised 22 Nov 2002.

                    US to set up 'Big Brother' citizen database
                    From Elaine Monaghan and Tim Reid in Washington
 

                    THE Bush Administration is developing a computer system to
                    monitor every American’s credit card transactions, phone calls
                    and even borrowed library books in an anti-terrorist measure
                    denounced as the country’s most intrusive domestic spying
                    network so far.

                    Critics of the Total Information Awareness System,
                    development of which was confirmed yesterday, say it will
                    give the Government unprecedented powers to spy on
                    citizens’ personal habits. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of
                    the Electronic Privacy Information Centre, a civil liberties group,
                    called it “the most sweeping plan to conduct surveillance on
                    the public since at least the 1960s”.

                    “It’s probably one of the most significant public profiling
                    proposals in modern US history,” he said. “There’s a very fine
                    line between protecting homeland security and building a police
                    state, and we are teetering on that line.”

                    The project is being overseen by the Defence Advanced
                    Research Projects Agency. That is headed by retired
                    Vice-Admiral John Poindexter, the National Security Adviser
                    during the Reagan Administration who was convicted of lying
                    to Congress in the Iran-Contra arms scandal. The convictions
                    were overturned on appeal.

                    The agency will fund the development of technologies to allow
                    the Government to track e-mail, internet use, travel, credit card
                    purchases, phone and bank records, medical files and every
                    type of accessible private and public data into what the
                    Pentagon described as “one centralised grand database”.

                    Edward Aldridge, Defence Under-Secretary, said: “Tracking of
                    potential terrorists and terrorist acts require that we search for
                    clues of such activities in a mass of data.” The project was
                    aimed at “searching vast quantities of data to determine links
                    and patterns indicative of terrorist activities”.

                    He added that the system would be part of the Bush
                    Administration’s new strategy of seeking to stop terrorists
                    before they attack, rather than treating terrorism as a law-
                    enforcement issue.

                    Language that seems to authorise the project was buried in the
                    Homeland Security Bill, which was approved by the Senate on
                    Tuesday. The provision faced some opposition on Capitol Hill,
                    but Congress was largely supportive.

                    The programme has been bolstered by other recent
                    developments and legislation. On Monday a special appeals
                    court ruled that criminal prosecutors should be able to request
                    the bugging of suspected terrorists.

                    The ruling means that the FBI can monitor Americans even if
                    they have no probable cause to think that a crime was
                    committed, the previous legal threshold. Federal agents have
                    also benefited from last year’s USA Patriot Act, which vastly
                    expands the FBI’s ability to obtain personal information on
                    suspected terrorists.

                    The former Vice-President, Al Gore, said: “We have always
                    held out the shibboleth of Big Brother as a nightmare vision of
                    the future that we’re going to avoid at all costs. They have
                    now taken the most fateful step in the direction of that Big
                    Brother nightmare that any President has ever allowed to
                    occur.”

                    Katie Corrigan, of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that
                    the Bill authorised the most intrusive domestic spying network
                    in American history. “For the first time, Americans can be
                    tracked as they engage in mundane activities,” Ms Corrigan
                    said. “It’s a radical departure from the principle that police can
                    conduct surveillance only when there is evidence of
                    wrongdoing.”

                    Jan Miller, a spokeswoman for the Defence Advanced
                    Research Projects Agency, said: “What we’re thinking is we
                    don’t want another September 11. So we must not only
                    connect the dots, but find them, know they’re dots we care
                    about and connect them in such a way that we prevent future
                    attacks. We believe that there can be security with privacy.”

                    Mr Aldridge said that information gathered with the technology
                    would be subject to existing legal restrictions.

                    Moves on monitoring that worry civil liberties groups

                    Steps taken since September 11 in the US that have angered
                    civil liberties groups:

                     Patriot Act, passed in October last year, greatly increases
                    powers for intelligence agents to monitor citizens. It scrapped
                    a previous requirement that foreign Intelligence be the sole
                    purpose for a Surveillance Act wiretap or search. Now
                    requires only a “significant purpose”. Also allows “roving”
                    wiretaps on all telephones a terrorism suspect might use.

                     Bureau of Prisons ordered by US Justice Department to alter
                    its rules to allow the monitoring of lawyer-client conversations
                    without court order or supervision.

                     A presidential executive order setting up military tribunals for
                    anyone deemed by the Justice Department to be an “enemy
                    combatant”, for which there is no legal definition. People held
                    under such status can be held indefinitely, without access to a
                    lawyer and without trial. The US Government refuses to reveal
                    how many are held under those terms.

                     On Monday a special appeals court issued a ruling that will
                    allow criminal investigators to spy on Americans even if they
                    have no probable cause to think a crime has been committed.
                    That decision overturned a lower court finding that proof of
                    “probable cause” was needed “to protect the privacy of
                    Americans against highly intrusive surveillance searches”.

                     Total Information Awareness System, the development of a
                    government “super-computer”. The Pentagon-funded project
                    aims to monitor every American’s internet use, reading habits,
                    financial transactions and mental health history.
 

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