Blog Post #9: Total Information Awareness

TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS, “ was a mass detection program by the United States Information Awareness Office. It operated under this title from February to May 2003 before being renamed Terrorism Information Awareness” (Wikipedia). Senator Ron Wyden stated that TIA was the “biggest surveillance program in the history of the United States” (USA Today). Through TIA the government was monitoring email, phone conversations, and internet searches.

The total information awareness is run by John Poindexter through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DAROA) which is a brand of the Department of Defense that focuses on military research. The system was a large database created by combining as much information as possible about as many people as possible through computer algorithms and human analysis. Then they made the information available to government officials, and sort through it trying to identify terrorists. One goal of the program was to give law enforcement access to private data without suspicion of wrongdoing or a warrant.

One good thing that could come from TIA is the benefit of stopping terrorism. The Information Awareness Office System Description Document states, “The TIA program seeks to provide a true end-to-end capability for analysts and decision-makers.” The TIA is characterized by four elements: innovative architecture, a rapid turn-around experimentation process, a technology refresh process, and an infrastructure development and tool hardening process. The ultimate goal of TIA is to identify foreign terrorists and figure out their plans to help the U.S. be ahead can create action plans.

Although Total Information Awareness was created to help our country it is bad because it takes away Americans' freedom. Under this program, every aspect of our lives would be cataloged and available to government officials. As Americans, we should have the freedom to keep our life private. The program is unconstitutional because it goes against the Forth Amendment. Every American was treated as a terrorism suspect.

TIA affected society as a whole because it is a program created to access people's personal information to try and stop terrorists. Total information awareness was created to correlate detailed information about certain people in order to anticipate and prevent terrorist incidents before execution.

It was the concept that terrorists could leave a digital trail behind them. For the government to discover that trail, they would have to collect data from everyone everywhere.

DARPA tried to give a reason for why TIA was created but it got shut down my congress. When society found out about TIA and the creation of the program altering learning about what it was there was a political storm.

Total information awareness has an impact on society as a whole because it was a treat. Over the past decade there has been an enormous immense amount of tracking and information because of technology and commercialization of data. This information could all be collected and put together to almost piece together a persons life. TIA would make this data surveillance a reality. 

If the TIA program was actually put into place then the American government would gain a huge amount of power over American citizens. It would threaten society because it goes against the government and people would abuse the ability.

Total Information Awareness would predominatingly have an affect on certain people in positive and negative ways. An example is how people that work within the government and specifically the program could possibly have access to peoples information. They could use their power to violate the law and use it for their personal use which would give them an advantage that other people would not have. This would be extremely wrong but would not put it past anyone because of the world we live in today.

Another example would be the difference of TIA would affect segments differently is the poor and the rich. As we all know, having money puts people at an advantage in life. If people have money they could use it to better protect themselves such as buying software to protect their information or something to keep the government getting too deep within their lives. Whereas the poor would not have access to something of this nature making them an easier target.

Total Information Awareness could affect me personally, including my family and friends and generation as a whole because we would be monitored by the U.S. government. Everything we did would be tracked and we would no longer have the freedom that we should be allowed as American citizens.