Total Information Awareness - know everything about everyone

The world community is faced with an extremely difficult problem, but rather, was placed in front of a very unpleasant choice: private (civil ) rights or personal safety. And not just personal.

After September 11, 2001, as we have already mentioned, in democratic countries started tightening the screws. This is very much not like, but mostly people prefer to supervise nedremannogo public eye risk of being buried under the debris of a train station or airport - or shopping center.


... No matter how cynical heard such statements, it is true.


So, what is the Total Information Awareness? .
Godfathers of the program, in particular, a retired Admiral John Poindexter (John Poindexter), based on the fact that to effectively fight against terrorism can only be through the prevention of terrorist attacks. Prevention, so to speak. In order to prevent a terrorist attack, we must know, especially one who is going to make it.


To identify a terrorist hard to. If it's professional, he is well able to hide, blending into a crowd of millions of ordinary people. And sometimes it happens that a terrorist is a person whom no one could suspect that even in the criminal intent.


So it was, for example, former military, Timothy McVeigh (Timothy McWay), settling down in a 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City, resulting in a split with the lives of 168 people. In the summer of 2001 he was sent to the light. Witnesses say that he never for a moment regretted what I did.


Pentagon officials believe that such things can be prevented only one way - to know all about each person. Yes, that is, all and each - information on bank transactions, medical records, e-mail, transport tickets, telephone calls.
For this program Total Information Awareness (TIA) and developed. The basic doctrine - just like in the movie ...


Pentagon officials argue that if it were not for the very notorious ' war on terror ', to engage in this program, no one would want to. Allow ourselves to doubt this statement. And the very.


Doubt, by the way, not only we. According to the BBC, the appropriateness of the program and the purity of the intentions of its creators doubt very many, and it is not only human rights organization.
Admiral John Poindexter in the old days was an adviser to President Reagan.


In this capacity, he spent some totally under the control of the operation, in particular, to sell weapons to Iran ( in Persian Gulf all the weapons either the Soviet or American, and the same army can use that, and more).


And earned money for it sent to Nicaragua to help the local guerrillas (Contras).


At the end of November 2002, by the way, Sen. Chuck Shyumer (Chuck Schumer) Poindexter asked to remove from the program, stating the following: ' If we are so we needed a big brother, the John Poindexter - the last person I would have chosen '.


Shyumer also noted that after all this history with Iran and Nicaragua Poindexter narrowly escaped jail. Yes, and escaped only because of bureaucratic delays.


But the main issue, of course, is the following: how Poindexter and the Defense Advanced Research Agency (DARPA) are going to translate all this into practice? .


technological. purely technological.


The site of the Center of protection of electronic information (Electronic Privacy Information Center - Epic) TIA are the ideas set forth in the following way.


In a huge database on all sides flock to so-called ... This giant centralized database will be constantly updated with information from various sources.


This central database will be compiled information on accounts and remittances of every person, medical information (about medical confidentiality, therefore, will be forgotten forever).


It is mandatory in the Base TIA will receive the attention of the nature of communication - in other words, information about the phone calls, and perhaps also their content, copies of emails and so on. Keeping track of your movements will also be postponed in a giant warehouse.


All this will be refueled information provided by intelligence services and anti-crime.


Now, note that the question of what to do with all these terabytes (at least) information? . This will be used by some ' special algorithms ' and, of course, ' manual labor '.


With the help of any clever algorithms for computers and people will identify ' suspicious tendencies '. Detailed description is available in 150 -page PDF-document, which is located at this address ( cook Acrobat Reader).


So what? . From wishing to work in the Police Intentions (similar to the Orwellian Thought Police ) will not be hammering action, at least initially.
The problem is the extent to which software developers are going to rely on information technology. According to the head of Marc Rotenberg, EPIC (Mark Rotenberg), ' high tech ' approach - the least reliable and least secure.


Rothenberg recalls in recent history with the ' Washington sniper ' (who were, in fact, it was two), when all the wide-eyed looking for a white truck:.


' We could have a whole database of information about each truck, white in this country, and we have tried to decide which of them belongs to sniper. In fact, it turned out that the white truck was all to do with it '.


What, one wonders, guarantees that the TIA system will not crash? .


After all, no hardware, no software (and it is an axiom ) is not immune from mistakes and ' birth defects '.


BBC reminiscent of the film ' Minority Report ', where the system fails the protagonist turns into a total object of persecution, because the system ' occurred to ' as if he was going to commit a crime.


Fantastic action movie can turn into a nightmarish reality: money and intellectual resources for this purpose in the United States has apparently. And most importantly, the desire to have a senior.


Among the players in the IT-market is already there were those who see benefits for themselves in the development of various surveillance systems.

Whether it is surveillance over the activities of employees of commercial businesses on the Internet ( and suddenly he was there watching pornography at lunchtime?), Whether it's the endless ( and endlessly full of holes ), biometric systems, all there VeriChip'y, and other.

Thus, taxpayers will pay for it, to monitor them, and from time to time, someone threw an innocent person would be in jail.


The trouble is that the choice was too difficult, either get used to the fact that ' Big Brother is watching you ' almost the bottom of the toilet, or live with the knowledge that tomorrow, your children can kill the next idiot who decided to become famous on the model of Herostratus, .


And the problems are solved with the doubters is easy. In the training camp of terrorists somewhere in Central Asia, sent a man that never was.


This man, who was not, there is ' most important ' and tells him that some very senior and very wealthy people have difficulties with the introduction of a high-tech system.


The problem - public opinion, but change it will be very easy: it takes only a few people and a certain amount of explosives. Fanatics of suicide are not necessary, though perhaps their presence will play a favorable role.


Wilco will answer ' most important '.



Discuss.