TIA gets Pentagon makeover
Michael Sniffen
MAY 21, 2003 

THE Pentagon has changed the name of its planned Total Information 
Awareness (TIA) anti-terror surveillance system and promised to use 
only legally collected personal data.

However, the US military has failed to satisfy a coalition of groups 
with privacy concerns. 

"What most Americans don't know is that the laws that protect consumer 
privacy don't apply when the data gets into the government's hands," 
Democrat Senator Ron Wyden said. "Lawfully collected information can 
include anything, medical records, travel, credit card and financial 
data." 

Senator Wyden and other member of the US Senate vowed to retain 
tight congressional control of the data-mining and analysis software 
being developed by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, 
or DARPA. 

DARPA hopes to predict terrorist attacks by detecting telltale patterns 
of behaviour in electronic records of passport applications, visas, work 
permits, driver's licenses, car rentals, airline ticket purchases, arrests 
or reports of suspicious activities. Other databases to be searched include 
financial, education, medical and housing records and identification 
records based on fingerprints, irises, facial shapes and gait. 

DARPA told the US Congress the Total Information Awareness program will 
now be called the Terrorism Information Awareness program. 

The old name "created in some minds the impression that TIA was a system 
to be used for developing dossiers on US citizens. That is not DoD's (the 
Department of Defence) intent," DARPA said. 

The goal is "to protect US citizens by detecting and defeating foreign 
terrorist threats before an attack" and the new name was chosen "to 
make this objective absolutely clear." 

While the name changed, the description of the program remained 
virtually the same. DARPA emphasised it is awarding contracts to 
develop privacy protection, like automated records of who sees 
data and how they use it. 

During research and testing, DARPA is only using "foreign intelligence 
and counter intelligence information legally obtained and useable by 
the (US) federal government or wholly synthetic (artificial) data." 

Testing is already under way or planned at the Army Intelligence 
and Security Command, National Security Agency, Defence Intelligence 
Agency, Central Intelligence Agency and several US military commands. 
The FBI has also discussed working with DARPA. 

DARPA did not propose changing any laws regulating government 
access to databases of private commercial transactions but did 
say some privacy issues remain. 

Current American laws governing some types of private information 
"may well ... completely preclude deployment of TIA search tools 
with respect to some data," DARPA said, without specifying which 
databases fall into this category. 

AAP

                                -==-

Source: "Australian IT" ...
australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,6469949%5E15322%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html

Cheers, Steve..

---