blog post 8 EOTO 2

Total Information Awareness (TIA) 

 

         In 2002, after the 9\11 attacks which took place on September 11th, 200, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, (DARPA) of the U.S department of defense launched a research and development effort known as the Total Information Awareness program, that was later renamed as the Terroism Information Awareness program. According to Google Scholar, TIA was a research and development program that was intended to prevent terrioism by developing and integrating information analysis. The program also included the development of a system/ network to provide an environment for conducting human experiments .

 google scholar

         TIA was focused on transactions and data that were already being connected and resided in various databases, privacy implications, and databases  that might have contained the digital signatures of most Americans as they conducted their daily lives. The program also included  high power search engines using secret matching criteria to analyze personal information. This technology was established as early as 2004. The Bush administration had been secretly monitoring emails, internet searches , and phone conversations of millions of Americans without their knowledge , the approval of congress or warrant issued by a judge . However, according to Google scholar, in 2008, congress passed the 1978, Foregin Intelligence Surveillance Amendments act, which required a search warrant for any electronic communication passing through the US. This new legislation, demolished the 1978 act and gave the green light to continue warrantless surveillance of millions of Americans. However, the IAO initially budgeted for the development of software that was intended to build into the TIA program, privacy and security protection. Unfortunately, when the project was transferred to the NSA, the technology came to a halt. It is clear  that this  software has the potential for horrifying violations of the right to privacy. As it was mentioned before, it is also clear that the Bush administration also violated the 1978 act. Ultimately, the goal of TIA program is to create information technology that America’s national security community can use to detect and defeat terrorist networks before they attack. However, according to springerlink.com, the TIA program is now designed as an experimental, multi- agency prototype network that participating  agencies can use to better understand , analyze, and make decisions based on whatever data they currently have legal access to. The TIA program was designed to incorporate multiple things such as providing focus warnings within an hour after a triggering event  that occurred such as 9/11. TIA is also able to automatically queue analysis based on parietal patterns that cover 90% of all previously known forigen attacks. TIA also supports collaboration, analytical reasoning, and information sharing  so that analysts can predict and propose theories and strategies , so that decision  makers can effectively evaluate the impact of policies and the course of action. Overall, we think that TIA will do us some good in the future, still seems a bit questionable to me. However no one really knows how the TIA program will affect us and the government. Today no one really knows the social and political impact that the TIA program will have on the society as a whole .