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Poindexter characterized the mission of IAO as "the integration 
and assured transition of components developed in the programs 
Genoa, Genoa II, GENISYS, EELD, WAE, TIDES, HumanID, and Bio-
surveillance," in an August 2002 speech at the DARPATECH 
conference in Anaheim, Calif. Those programs, all of which predate 
TIA and are under the aegis of the IAO, analyze and extract data, 
allow the identification of individuals by their characteristic 
body movements, or automatically translate Arab, Persian and other 
languages into English. Poindexter explained that TIA is "the 
overarching program that binds IAO's efforts together."

Many of the components of TIA, such as Genoa, have been ongoing 
projects since the Clinton administration. And in the May 13, 1999, 
issue of Commerce Business Daily, a now-superceded bulletin board for 
government contracts, there is a notice from DARPA that it intended 
to award a company named Integral Visuals, Inc. a purchase order 
for technical and engineering support for "Project Genoa and Total 
Information Awareness," suggesting that TIA, like its components, 
predates the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.  

In a Nov. 20, 2002, news briefing, Undersecretary of Defense for 
Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology Pete Aldridge disclosed 
that Poindexter was the mastermind of the TIA project. Noting 
that Poindexter had "a passion for this project," Aldridge explained, 
"He came to us with the project after September the 11th and volunteered 
it to DARPA. Tony Tether, the director of DARPA, came over with John 
and briefed it to me, and I thought it was a project worthy of pursuit."

The private connection  

Last April, IAO published a document with the bureaucratic title BAA 
02-08 Information Awareness Proposer Information Pamphlet, which asks 
private companies to provide "innovative research proposals in the area 
of information technologies that will aid in the detection, classification, 
identification, and tracking of potential foreign terroristsaand to develop 
options to prevent their terrorist acts."

The same document spells out the central role that contractors play 
in IAO, which will "use personnel from SRS Technologies, Syntek 
Technologies, CACI, Schafer Corporation and Adroit Systems as 
special resources to assist with the logistics of administering 
proposal evaluation and to provide advice on specific technical 
areas."

DARPA has hired diversified defense industry giants Lockheed-Martin 
and Booz Allen & Hamilton for TIA and related projects. Booz Allen has 
won what may become the largest TIA contract, potentially worth $62 
million over the next five years if DARPA exercises all the contract's 
options.  

Booz Allen employee Grey E. Burkhart's resume notes that he is the 
"assistant program manager for the implementation of an advanced 
collaborative analysis system for the counterterrorism and intelligence 
communities," which he identifies as "Total Information Awareness (TIA) 
System Implementation." DARPA spokeswoman Walker told the Center 
that Burkhart is not an employee of the government.  

Burkhart has had more than 25 years of experience in strategic 
security, intelligence, and telecommunications. Working in both the 
private and public sectors he was a career intelligence officer,
CEO of Allied Communications Engineering, and has become a "recognized 
expert on in the global proliferation of information technology."

Burkhart's resume also notes that he was a member of Booz Allen's 
Homeland Security Coordination Center and Tiger Team, for which he 
"conducted analysis of new legislation and executive orders and 
assessed their impact on current and future business."

Big brother on campus  

Private companies have not been the only players in TIA research. 
Dozens of universities within and without the United States have
also worked on the program's components for years.  

Since late 2000, researchers at Georgia Tech have been working on a 
new computer-based identification system called Human ID that 
theoretically can take video images from a camera and distinguish 
people by the way that they walk and their different mannerisms. 
The applications of this software could have unlimited potential when 
used with satellite imaging, government video, and even security cameras. 
The theory is that each person has distinctive body movements and by 
recording and analyzing these movements, the government could 
identify suspects even if they are wearing disguises or have altered
their appearances.  

According to unclassified budget documents recently released by the 
Defense Department, DARPA spent $11.8 million during the 2001 fiscal 
year to develop a "pilot force protection system" for Human ID as well
as create prototype models and develop advanced sensors (p. 88.). 
DARPA's new budget increases the program's spending to $30.1 million 
during the next two fiscal years to identify the limitations of the 
range and accuracy of the program while fusing multi-modal technologies 
to derive biometric signatures.  

Overall, Georgia Tech has received four federal grants totaling $1.2 
million for the "HumanID from movement" project, beginning in the last 
quarter of 2000. The funds are part of a $50 million DARPA program to 
identify people from a distance that encompasses 26 research projects 
including two from Georgia Tech to analyze movement.  

In addition to recognizing people by body movement, Human ID is 
working on facial recognition and iris recognition software. These 
uses have been tested on subjects at a distance of 25-150 feet, but 
future DARPA plans anticipate distances as far as 500 feet.  

"I do computer vision research," said Aaron Bobick, an associate 
professor at Georgia Tech researching HumanID for DARPA. "Part of 
it is to see how to get computers to see things. One of things that 
I am working on is understanding motion and recognizing people from 
a distance."

Bobick told the Center that the research is still preliminary. 
"We've found it to be successful in a limited number of cases but 
gait recognition is really in its infancy. We don't know how successful
it will be. We are still at the point where we don't know what will
be possible."

DARPA projects on identification go well beyond "naked eye" visual 
appearance. The defense agency is currently trying to identify potential 
suspects by their unseen traits using plumes of odorant molecules. 
While doing experiments on subjects as small as moths, bacteria and 
mammals, scientists are finding new ways of differentiating small 
particles to understand identity.  

DARPA has spent more than $427,000 on four grants to the University 
of Arizona dating back to 1998 to study this identification method 
called "biologically-inspired search algorithms for locating unseen 
odor sources."

Like gait recognition, the smell test is still in development.  

The Center For Public Integrity  

All Copyrights (c) are acknowledged. Material reproduced for  
educational and research purposes only.

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Source: Raiders News Updates - http://www.raidersnewsupdate.com/

Cheers, Steve..

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