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TIA Project to End 216

Posted by CowboyNeal from the let-freedom-ring dept.
Marnhinn writes "MSNBC is reporting that the Terrorism Spying Project (also known as TIA) is dead. The government is cancelling most of the project and changing the rest to focus on people outside the United States." TIA had been on death's door for a while, but now it's finally official. Some of the programs will still be around, however, they will just be shifted over to different departments.
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TIA Project to End More

TIA Project to End

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  • I'm not an American... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MaestroSartori ( 146297 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @08:07AM (#7062534) Homepage
    ...and I don't think I'm hugely paranoid about evil government and so on, but I suspect most of the things that TIA was going to do are probably already going on in one form or another behind the scenes.

    Maybe the only good thing about formalising it would be that at least there'd be some sort of accountability...

    • Re:I'm not an American... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by msgmonkey ( 599753 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @08:13AM (#7062556)
      Well one interesting legal point someone mentioned a while back was whilst most countries constitutions do not allow spying on their citizens there is nothing stopping them from spying on other counties citizens. A legal loophole would allow lets say the US and UK to have an agreement whereby they say "you spy on mine and I'ill spy on yours and we'ill exchange the information"

      • Re:I'm not an American... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by AlecC ( 512609 ) <aleccawley@gmail.com> on Friday September 26, 2003 @08:18AM (#7062572)
        A legal loophole would allow lets say the US and UK to have an agreement whereby they say "you spy on mine and I'ill spy on yours and we'ill exchange the information"

        While, as you say, this might well be legal, the political/PR consequences if it got out would be enormous - far too much risk for the "other" govenrment to take. Look how much fuss there was when the Israelis were found to be collecting relatively samlla amounts of information about the US.

        • Re:I'm not an American... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by KingJoshi ( 615691 ) <slashdot@joshi.tk> on Friday September 26, 2003 @08:30AM (#7062635) Homepage
          When there were rumors that the US has bugged rooms in the United Nations a little while back, I think ALL the diplomats reacted as though it was common practice. And not just from the United States either.

          And it's not just about US planting bugs all over China's premier's plane. It'd be foolish for leaders of ally nations to assume that just because you're an ally, that we won't try to get more info than you're telling us. And we'd be foolish not to expect the same.

          So, with that said, it'd make sense if the FBI/CIA or whomever contacted agencies in UK and said, would you happen to have info on this guy...
          • Well, if they could narrow it down to "this guy" or "that gal," they would still have authority under PATRIOT to do damn near anything they want provided with sufficient justification. The problem with TIA was narrowing the net down to 270 million or so people in the hopes of finding something interesting, sort of like scooping up the entire Pacific Ocean in the hopes of finding a sea urchin.

        • That might not be the best example. The US and UK collaborate to a much greater extent than the US and Israelis do, and it's already going on - and not just in Iraq. For example, the Echelon listening system that's run jointly by the American NSA and GCHQ here in England. There's a nice political loophole that gets used - "hey, we speak the same language and used to be the same country, we'll be okay, let's just spy on those dang furriners instead" - so they don't have to publicise it or seek approval.

          Sigh

        • [PR consequences of US and UK spying on each other]

          Nobody seemed to pay much interest in the UK when former CIA director James Woolsey admitted the fact (which like many truths, appears to be common knowledge amongst the entire population of the country apart from the politicians) that the US is commercially spying [bbc.co.uk] on us.

      • Re:I'm not an American... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Anyone here believe the US and UK governments aren't spying on their own citizens, legally or not?

        • Re:I'm not an American... (Score:1, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          They are. Echelon would certainly appear to be a large scheme which would allow the interchange of data between the various participating countries. I'm not saying that they do it as a matter of routine, but I have no doubts that they use each other for "unofficial" internal information gathering for a handful of individuals.
        • Anyone here believe the US and UK governments aren't spying on their own citizens, legally or not?

          I imagine a lot of people believe that, but I'm not one of them.
        • supposedly...

          The NSA records and evaluates the communications of US citizens all the time. They are watching, of course. They have cast a huge net and overhear all sorts of things.

          However, they cannot use these things as evidence in a US court unless they had permission from a judge to conduct the surveillance, before the fact. I don't know how difficult this is to acquire these days, but I believe it is still the case.

          They cannot use intelligence from foreign countries to spy on US citizens without a
      • Do you really think any country so paranoid that they would spy on their own citizens would trust another country? That'd just be begging for disinformation... from your own, supposed allies.

        Nah, I'm sure any government would just do it the good ol' way: spy domestically and do whatever you can to help keep that topic so obscure and incredible that it's no longer believable. Once you get the hyper-paranoid and even more hyper-active conspiracy theorists all up in arms, you know you're safe from any real

      • Spying (Score:3, Insightful)

        by chrystoph ( 89878 )
        I think that the whole spying thing can be summed up with a poster the Security Officer at one of my Navy commands had on his wall.

        "Countries do not have friends, only interests."

        • Re:Spying (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Stiletto ( 12066 )
          I think that the whole spying thing can be summed up with a poster the Security Officer at one of my Navy commands had on his wall.

          "Countries do not have friends, only interests."

          That seems to at least sum up the "United States foreign policy" thing. And we wonder why the whole world hates us...

      • Re:I'm not an American... (Score:4, Informative)

        by KrispyKringle ( 672903 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @09:45AM (#7063131)
        This was allegedly the case with Echelon (many, many prior stories about it here on Slashdot). Allegedly, as I said, there was an agreement between the five signing nations (US, UK, Australia, Germany, and someone else...) to "share" information on each other's citizens to circumvent restrictions.

        To be fair, a lot of this really is hype, though. I doubt that much of this went on in a very general scrope--though possibly isolated incidents like industrial espionage ofpersonal vendettas are more likely--simply because that amount of information takes way too much time to do any reasonable processing with. They don't have the manpower.

        This was the one interesting (from an academic viewpoint) aspect of TIA. How can you process so much information from so many different sources in so many different forms, and build any real predictions or patterns in it? Especially when we don't really even have any samples of "terrorist-like activity." I mean, what, do terrorists all run up their credit card debt before killing themselves, figuring they won't have to deal with it anyway?

        • I mean, what, do terrorists all run up their credit card debt before killing themselves, figuring they won't have to deal with it anyway?

          So, if somebody suddenly maxes their credit cards, they're either:

          • A Terrarist
          • Suicidal
          • unemployed with no income source
          • a victim of identity theft
          Whew, that narrows it down!
        • How can you process that much information?

          Probably about as well as the Credit Reporting agencies. Read that, not very well. They have every financial incentive to keep their information accurate. Businesses want LOTS of people to loan money too, and NOBODY who defaults. They are just a case in point of Garbage-In, Garbage-Out.

          Their records regarding my salary, jobs, prior residences, etc. are probably better than my own. It's the other events in life, like a Hospital sending a bill to a collection agen

      • Except that, in turn, is illegal. You can't collect domestic intelligence, and you cannot accept domestic intelligence from outside sources.

        This goes back to Nixon when the put a wall up between the FBI and the CIA. The CIA has no law enforcement role, and can gather all of the speculative information it cares to.

        The FBI's mission is law enforcement. Everything the FBI gathers has the possibility of being dragged into a courtroom. They have to play by the books, or they cannot use their evidence in a tr

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • CONTRADICTORY NEWS: Cancelled or Not? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Featureless ( 599963 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @10:02AM (#7063305) Journal
      If it's cancelled then why did I read this article [theregister.co.uk] two days ago?

      • Re:Gotta give them credit (Score:5, Insightful)

        by symbolic ( 11752 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @12:45PM (#7064715)
        DARPA's dreaded Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, formerly administered by convicted felon and Republican hero John Poindexter of Iran-Contra fame...

        Very few articles about TIA seem to mention the fact that Poindexter is a person that cannot be trusted, or that he's associated with a political party that has pushed the notion of 'patriotism' onto a dangerous, rocky slope that has every American citizen under suspicion for possible terrorist activity. TIA will not provide any protection against terrorism, but if history is any indication, it will provide plenty of opportunity for abuse.
    • One unique difference between what TIA was working on and the typical surveillance that is going on and will continue is that TIA was administered by a convicted felon who was charged with crimes inimical to American security, including lying to Congress and facilitating the transfer of arms to known terrorists. TIA was a stupid idea from the very beginning (you may recall that's when Poindexter released a logo for the organization that looked like the SS logo); I'm glad to see its coffin nailed shut.

  • Whatever... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by goldenfield ( 64924 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @08:08AM (#7062536) Journal
    So its 'officially' cancelled...I have a hard time believe that the government thought it was important/useful, and now everyone has agreed that we don't need it, and has moved on.

    So now there's no offical TIA project...that just means they can hide bits and pieces of it in other projects.

    If they want the data, they'll get it.
    • ...the government thought it was important/useful...

      The assumption you are making is that the highest levels of government decided this was important, and then changed their mind. When the opposite is true. Some employees at DARPA thought it would be an interesting research project. When the news hit the fan, and Congress and the public heard about, the highest levels of government took an interest and said, "What are you doing? Stop it." This sort of thing happens in any organization.

      • Re:Whatever... (Score:1, Redundant)

        by henrygb ( 668225 )
        It seems to be more along the lines of "Who is doing this? Poindexter? Call it something else and do it somewhere else."

        "The conferees agree with the Senate position which eliminates funding for the Terrorism Information Awareness program within the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency," the conference report said in a section Wyden released. "The conferees are concerned about the activities of the Information Awareness Office and direct that the office be terminated immediately."...

        • Poindexter was in charge of DARPA. For information about Poindexter, click here. [wikipedia.org] Basically, the guy got caught lying to save Reagan.

          Nothing DARPA did was going to fly with Poindexter in charge, espcially as something as attention getting as TIA. There were just too many liberal and special interest groups who had it in for the guy. So Poindexter quit, hoping that with his resigniation, TIA and DARPA would disappear back into the background.

          It didn't. Now TIA, in it's present incarnation, is dead.

    • Yes, that's what the Canadians think, anyway.

      Congress hides some of Pentagon's spying project in other agencies [canada.com]


      They're probably right, of course.

    • Re:Whatever... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by EinarH ( 583836 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @10:08AM (#7063349) Journal
      TIA will become another program that's "downgraded" in other words like the Star Wars program grom the Reagan era.
      Star Wars was supposed to end, but lived on in black budget for many years, hiding in the dark and with only small leaks of information leaked out in the ninthies, and then almost 15 years later the program derived into the Ballistic Missile Defense program.

      So the program in it's current form is dead, but the research necessarily to complete the program for future use will continue.


    • I've read all the posts up to this one, and everyone has had the same reaction: The U.S. government is lying when it says it has stopped its plan to spy on U.S. citizens. But where is the intensity? Everyone seems to be taking it a little too calmly.

      If a government does not serve its citizens, that government is corrupt. If a government lies to its citizens, that government is corrupt.

      I'm doing my part to discuss the mistakes of the U.S. government. For example, I collected this information: Histor [hevanet.com]
      • The lack of intensity most likely comes from the fact that we have no evidence that they are lying, and are making an assumption -- quite possibly a paranoid assumption -- that they are.

        The government has said it's shelved the TIA project, which is exactly what many Americans wanted. Many people will probably breathe a sigh of relief knowing it won't get funded and that Poindexter has been given his walking papers.

        But what purpose does intensity serve in this instance?

        "TIA is a threat to our civil libert

  • MATRIX (Score:5, Informative)

    by henbane ( 663769 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @08:11AM (#7062550)
    But from the ashes of TIA rises the MATRIX [iir.com]. This article [theregister.co.uk] on the Register doesn't paint a pretty picture.

    And the conspicuous use of the phrase 'anti-terrorism' does send up a red flag, being the standard incantation with which assaults on the liberties and privacy of ordinary citizens are justified. "The MATRIX pilot project is an effort to increase and enhance the exchange of sensitive terrorism and other criminal activity information between local, state, and federal agencies," the project Web site explains. The system will use "data analysis and data integration technology to improve the usefulness of information contained in multiple types of document storage systems." From that it would appear that the scheme is designed to give the Feds what they're not allowed to get simply by re-packaging it and selling it through a back channel. It also looks designed to find and prosecute, perhaps persecute, unfortunate bastards in the name of the American anti-terror Jihad.

    Sounds like TIA wasn't so bad after all.

    • Speaking of control, who edits your news? What do they choose to emphasize? What do they leave out?

      The link is actually an Associated Press story. It's also covered by AFP and will soon be picked up by others. The editors could sharpen up and not keep plugging lame sites or voluntarily giving MS a monopoly over your news sources as well.

    • Since when has The Register been the source of objective commentary on American Society and Government. How does "American anti-terror jihad" constitute objective (or at least fair) journalism such that this post rates a +5? I'm beginning to think that /. is fast becoming a bastion of the ill-informed who couldn't be bothered with learning how their own government actually works, but having plenty of opinion (and fantastic imagination) on what it's doing wrong.
    • Well, it if it isn't life imitating art again...

      Jesus Christ people, that AIs weren't the good guys!

  • Score one for the good guys? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Millennium ( 2451 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @08:16AM (#7062570)
    I don't know about this. If it were truly scrapped, then it would be a wonderful thing. More likely, however, it's simply being driven underground.

    Once granted power, no government ever gives it up willingly. That's the whole point of limited government, and it's why I doubt that this is really being cancelled. I'd watch the budget for next year, to see if the infamous black budget suddently grows by the same amount that TIA would have gotten.
    • More likely, however, it's simply being driven underground.

      Let's not forget that Echelon was created entirely underground, so business as usual I see. If the public won't like what you are doing; don't tell them!

    • But you see, it was NEVER a power of government.

      Congresscritters are every bit as paranoid as the rest of us. The memories of J. Edgar Hoover, and a dossier of everyone of not in America are still a fresh memory.

      Also for the record, the Black Budget does not exist. The last time someone pulled that crap was Iran-Contra, and oh wait, the was Pointdexter and he's now in charge of ... damnit.

      The Neocons have the day. But they overestimate the patience of the American people. We may be lazy, but when piss

  • You're welcome.
  • This is great, but let's not forget that there is always CAPPS II [internet.com], which is just the TIA in disguise!

  • State Versions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by borroff ( 267566 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @08:19AM (#7062579) Journal

    The article neglects to mention that some states have begun implementing their own version of TIA (see The Washington Post [washingtonpost.com] article). There appears to be some feeling that they can sneak in under the radar if it's not a federal program.

    The pledges of restraint by Florida law enforcement officials are particularly comforting.

  • See (Score:5, Funny)

    by Hard_Code ( 49548 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @08:20AM (#7062591)
    See, TIA is dead, honest *waves hands*. You made a big fuss over nothing. We're the government, we're here to help you. Now move along, thank you.

  • not only outside the US... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by upstateguy ( 90019 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @08:23AM (#7062612)
    The program still continues on non-citizens while they are in the U.S.

    From the article linked (emphasis mine):

    But they shifted some of the high-powered software under development to different government offices, to be used to gather intelligence from U.S. citizens abroad and foreigners in this country and abroad.

  • Don't be naive (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    TIA is too valuable to die. It's the best weapon bureaucrats have to preserve their jobs, and that is the number one priority of any bureaucrat. Public service is at best a second priority, and usually not even that.

    Consider this article from today's news: IRS considers giving data to other agencies: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/arti c les/2003/09/25/irs_considers_giving_data_to_other_ agencies/

    The biggest threat to America and its freedoms is not from Dictators, but from the bureaucrats

  • *Really* dead? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Chagrin ( 128939 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @08:35AM (#7062656) Homepage
    So how long will it be before I start seeing T1 lines failing again when they start removing the wiretaps?
  • TIA in Spain is about Mortadelo & Filemon, very different indeed:

    http://www.mortadeloyfilemon.com/club/default.as p

  • Great. (Score:3, Funny)

    by CGP314 ( 672613 ) <CGP&ColinGregoryPalmer,net> on Friday September 26, 2003 @08:45AM (#7062715) Homepage
    The government is cancelling most of the project and changing the rest to focus on people outside the United States.

    Oh great, I moved to the UK from the US to get away from TIA.

  • Why, yes, it IS an aluminum foil hat. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rot26 ( 240034 ) * on Friday September 26, 2003 @08:47AM (#7062725) Homepage Journal
    Anybody who thinks for a minute that TIA is going away as long as Ashcroft is AG is high. This isn't a retreat, it's a regrouping before the next attack. As has been discussed here before, we will see this thing pop up again, medusa-like, under a variety of disguises; they'll be tracking child molesters, deadbeat dads, drug dealers, rapists, what have you, and each will be a noble enterprise, as difficult to criticize as a newborn baby. (No mention of rogue librarians will be made, for sure.) Behind the scenes, of course, will be the massive data-mining that was the original goal. We'll only hear about THAT part incidentally, incrementally, accidentally, etc-ally.

    • Why, yes, it IS an aluminum foil hat.

      There's the problem. It should be made out of tin. ;)

      (I'm not calling you crazy or anything, just poking a little fun.)

      --RJ

    • Ashcroft - Attorney General, Justice Department.
      TIA - DARPA, Defense Department.

      As hard as it may be to believe, Ashcroft has nothing to do with TIA or anything else in the Pentagon. TIA was Poindexter's baby and carried Rumsfeld's seal of approval, not Ashcroft's.

      • As hard as it may be to believe, Ashcroft has nothing to do with TIA or anything else in the Pentagon. TIA was Poindexter's baby and carried Rumsfeld's seal of approval, not Ashcroft's.

        And pry-thee which division of the Defense Department was going to use TIA had it been fully implemented and deployed?

        DARPA may be part of the Defense Department, but in this case they were essentially a contractor developing a product for use by Justice.
    • > Anybody who thinks for a minute that TIA is going away as long as Ashcroft is AG is high. This isn't a retreat, it's a regrouping before the next attack. As has been discussed here before, we will see this thing pop up again, medusa-like, under a variety of disguises; they'll be tracking child molesters, deadbeat dads, drug dealers, rapists, what have you, and each will be a noble enterprise, as difficult to criticize as a newborn baby.

      Newborn babies? Damn, those fuckers are loud. "YO, THE 90S ARE

  • Like the Office of Strategic Influence? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by I am Jack's username ( 528712 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @08:47AM (#7062726)
    "And then there was the office of strategic influence. [...] I went down that next day and said fine, if you want to savage this thing fine I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have." - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 2002-11-18, http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Nov2002/t11212002_ t1118sd2.html [defenselink.mil]

  • Well, that's all right then (Score:3, Funny)

    by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @08:49AM (#7062736) Homepage
    But say, why does NASA need so many new $10,000 hammers and toilet seats?

  • Just one petabyte of computer data could fill the Library of Congress more than 50 times.

    How comforting, here we go again!

    As a side note, does that mean the volume of 1 PB of storage would fill up the Library of Congress? it doesn't really clarify that to the masses ;-)

  • The 52 most dangerous American officials (Score:5, Interesting)

    by axxackall ( 579006 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @09:13AM (#7062903) Homepage Journal
    I found a very interesting article [msnbc.com] about some French people thinking that 9/11 was organized by US official in order to achive specific personal political and financial benefits. Here is the text of the article in case if it will be slashdotted:

    PARIS, Sept. 25 -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is the Ace of Spades and al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden a Joker in a provocative pack of French playing cards depicting "the 52 most dangerous American officials."

    A RIPOSTE TO the "most-wanted" cards of Iraqi leaders issued to U.S. soldiers, the deck is the latest commercial offering by a radical think tank whose conspiracy theory account of the Sept. 11 attacks stormed French bestseller charts last year.

    "We've already sold some 2,500 decks. That's not bad considering we couldn't find anyone who was willing to print them at first," said Thierry Meyssan, president of the Paris-based Reseau Voltaire group.

    "We were shocked by the indecency of the cards distributed by the U.S. military. It was as if arresting people was some kind of game," Meyssan told Reuters Thursday.

    Two hundred packs of the original Pentagon-devised U.S. cards were sent to U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The American public has since snapped up hundreds of thousands of the decks, which portray Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as the Ace of Spades.

    The French cards bestow that honor not on President Bush but Rumsfeld. Under his mug shot, he is accused of using the Sept. 11 attacks "to increase military budgets and plan an army in space that could completely dominate Earth."

    As King of Diamonds -- the suit chosen to represent economic power in the U.S. administration -- Bush is described merely as "head of a baseball club ... designated president of the United States by friends of his father at the Supreme Court."

    In the 2000 election, the Court stopped a potentially decisive recount in Florida, a move that handed the presidency to Bush.

    Osama bin Laden, whose al-Qaida network Washington blames for the Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. landmarks, is a Joker described as "a CIA agent charged ... with provoking a clash between the 'Arab-Muslim' and 'Judeo-Christian' worlds."

    Meyssan won notoriety for his book "L'Effroyable Imposture" ("The Appalling Fraud"), which suggested U.S. military insiders were probably behind the Sept. 11 attacks.

    I am now looking to buy that french deck of cards - cood be a very insightful gift here in North America (especially here in Canada) for people who has not completely lost the sense of humor :)

    • Stay exactly where you are, place your hands against the wall and remain in that position. You will be collected shortly.

      You are scheduled for a visit to a thought re-alignment centre where a quick mental enema will cure you of your ills. Reading non-US approved news sources is unpatriotic and will not be tolerated.

      Have a nice day!

      ---

    • Re:The 52 most dangerous American officials (Score:5, Informative)

      by ThinWhiteDuke ( 464916 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @10:32AM (#7063525)
      Just FYI. While this idea "could" be "slightly" amusing, I guess you might be interested in knowing a little more about Meyssan.

      This guy is a known leftist activist with a blatant anti-American agenda. (Yes there are *some* anti-Americans in France). His book, "L'Effroyable Imposture", has been repeatedly debunked in French mainstream media and is widely considered as a failed marketing coup. Interestingly, previous work by Meyssan had earned him the reputation of a good investigator. His work on the French extreme right parties is viewed as solid and professional. For many, "L'Effroyable Imposture" is a sort of political/intellectual suicide.

      Back to the msnbc article, I'm not quite comfortable about their decision to publish it that way, especially under the header "French cards spoof U.S. government". To the casual reader, this article hammers the message : "the French hate us". I would not be surprised if most Americans were offended by this deck and added this piece of information into the "France sucks" column.
      Of course, msnbc is absolutely free to publish whatever it wishes, but I still think they fell here into demagoguery and populism. Believe me, there are a lot of very insightful and interesting articles in the French press about the whole 911/Iraq/diplomacy stuff, none of which are stained by anti-americanism. I think it's sad that msnbc chose this one French initiative to report.
      • Let me guess, you'd also complain about MSNBC had the story been about a bunch of notoriously right-wing Americans publishing the same deck of cards with various French officials' pictures on it, right Mr. "Fair & Objective"?
        • No, I 'd complain about some French mainstream news source reporting about some neocons publishing this kind of moronic cards deck. Especially if this is the only occurrence such a news source would tell us about how people on the other side of the pond think.

          You know, there's low-end, hate-inducing stuff on both sides. Yet, I read the US press as much as the French one (mainstream, "respectable" sources like Le Monde, Le Figaro, CNN, NYT)... The overall message on the French side seems to be "The US we
          • I'd complain about some French mainstream news source reporting about some neocons publishing this kind of moronic cards deck.

            What makes the french deck to be more moronic than the original American one? Personally, my first reaction when I sa the american deck with Iraqi officials several months ago was: "who is the moron who decided to print that?"

            The overall message on the French side seems to be "The US were/are wrong"; on the American side it leans toward "the French hate us". I think there's a dif

      • French Conspiracy Theorists Hate US

        or

        French media encourage a robust and informative debate about US policy

    • Re:The 52 most dangerous American officials (Score:4, Interesting)

      by KludgeGrrl ( 630396 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @12:19PM (#7064509) Homepage
      I am now looking to buy that french deck of cards

      Why give the French all the credit? A US blogger came up with the same idea back in April [blogspot.com]

      Indeed, as a Canadian, you might have heard the spot on CBC's "Here and Now" a few months ago where a maker of such a deck was banned from selling it on e-bay [north.cbc.ca]. According to The Agonist [agonist.org], "He owns the domain name, "thebushadministration.com [thebushadm...ration.com]" where he's posted the images for sale."

      So you can spend locally and protest globally. Or something like that.

  • electoral reasons? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by wannasleep ( 668379 )
    So, the US has stopped the part of the project that has to do with people who are more likely to vote. Why not on Americans abroad? Are they more likely to be terrorists? And foreigners who live in the US?
    What are american companies supposed to do? Suppose I am Visa. Should I give out information on my foreign customers who do not live in the US? Example: in many European countries, credit reporting agencies can not be established because they would be in violation of privacy laws. How would the informatio
  • That no one has posted a

    Netcraft delivered another bombshell to the beleagured US intelligence services, *TIA is dying.

  • Yes, TIA is kaput. Sure. Go back to sleep now..

    They just killed it off in name. It's more than alive and well under an alias. Just like "Carnivore" is now operating under "DCS1000"

  • ... the USA abusing its baserights in my country (its ally) still further to spy on its allies popluation with these nifty new tools. What this ammounts to is that the USA's 1984 style surveillance has been reduced in scope, refocused and that the current US administration has (reluctantly) decided to define civil liberties as something that is only valid if you are a US citizen on US soil. I suppose that democracy and civil liberties are for everyone, but Non US citizens in general and US citizens abroad a
  • Powerful surveillance technologies in the hands of Western security organizations are the thermonuclear deterrent of the present day. They are expensive, unpopular, and capable of being used for any number of great evils - but they are the only alternative to the maintenance of enormous conventional forces designed to fight brutal and exhausting wars of occupation.

    It's not that TIA has died - it's that it has been moved into the secret realm and given to people who have the stomach to run it. Use of tech
    • Use of technologies like TIA is the best option we have available to defend the comfortable lives we lead and to provide hope for improving the lives of people around the world through economic prosperity driven by the engine of Western markets.

      you may have mis-spelled your sig. Should be, "Dream Weaver".

      And no, I don't mean that in a nice way.


      -FL

  • This thing has more lives than Freddy Kruger, Michael Myers and a hundredweight of cats put together. Don't count on it being well and truly dead until someone gets voted into office who wants to see it dead and has the political clout to shoot it with a silver bullet, drive a stake through its heart, hack its body into little bitty pieces and bury it twelve feet down in the shadow of a church at midnight.
  • and that is all I have to say about that.
  • It will just a a "black budget" item... it's just no longer a public budget line item. If every black budget item was up for public debate those would meet the same fate.

  • Oh Goodie... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Bohnanza ( 523456 )
    So now instead of having a database of everything about everybody, the government will have a SECRET database of everything about everybody.
  • Information gathering is not really the problem. Any fool with a large DB backend, a few Terrabytes, and an army of clerks could gather information.

    What you REALLY need is exformation. Exformation is the process of reducing, fusing, and combining data to form a corpus. In essence what you have is not as important as what is left over after you throw away the irrelevant.

    No one has a good way of sifting through information like that. We all do it everyday to compress data down to what the conciousness can

  • TIA Alive and Well. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by blcknight ( 705826 )
    From "SECRECY NEWS from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy" -- http://ic-arda.org/Novel_Intelligence/index.html "Indeed, one TIA-like program conducted under the auspices of U.S. intelligence is the "Novel Intelligence from Massive Data" (NIMD) initiative of the little-known Intelligence Community Advanced Research and Development Activity (ARDA). Pursued with a minimal public profile and lacking a polarizing figure like Adm. Poindexter to galvanize opposition, NIMD has proceeded quietly even as TIA i
  • Do you really think it's gone? Or is it just classified, like the NSA's PGP-breaker cluster?

  • I found this article at defensetech [defensetech.org] -- hopefully Noah will have a more complete wired article:

    BRIDE OF "TIA" LIVES

    Congress may have driven a stake through Total Information Awareness. But there are lots of other government data-mining programs -- eeriely similar to TIA -- that are still very much alive.

    One TIA-like project is Novel Intelligence from Massive Data (NIMD), an initiative of the little-known Intelligence Community Advanced Research and Development Activity, notes secrecy guru Steven Aftergood

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