John Poindexter’s Plan for “Total Information Awareness” in Effect by Another Name
June 11, 2013/ Institute for Public Accuracy News Release
COLEEN ROWLEY
Rowley is a former FBI special agent and division counsel whose May 2002 memo described some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures and was named one of Time magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002.
On Monday she appeared on CNN and just wrote a piece for their website, which states: “The recent disclosures about the National Security Agency’s massive and aggressive spying on the world, including U.S. citizens, along with other scandals showing Associated Press and Fox News reporters targeted in ‘leak’ investigations, should make us realize that John Poindexter’s plan for ‘Total Information Awareness’ never died: It merely went underground and changed its name.
“When the TIA idea was first proposed by the Bush administration after 9/11, along with a ‘Big Brother’ all-seeing eye logo, it was widely considered a crazy notion, resulting in an outcry. That data collection plan, which involved indiscriminate spying on Americans, was quickly squelched — at least publicly.
“The truth, however, was that it was reborn under dozens of massive data collection and surveillance programs within each of our 16 highly secretive intelligence agencies, under a variety of cute acronyms.”
Background: The New York Times reported on Nov, 9, 2002: “The Pentagon is constructing a computer system that could create a vast electronic dragnet, searching for personal information as part of the hunt for terrorists around the globe — including the United States.
“As the director of the effort, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, has described the system in Pentagon documents and in speeches, it will provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access to information from Internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents, without a search warrant.”
The Guardian reported on Nov. 22, 2002 in “Big Brother Will be Watching America“: “In 1986, when the world first heard of the events now known as the Iran-Contra affair, John Poindexter, then national security adviser, purged more than 5,000 incriminating emails. Unfortunately for Mr. Poindexter, backup files existed.
“He won’t be making that mistake again, and neither should anyone else after the formal launch this week of a Pentagon research project headed by Mr. Poindexter that is devoted to sifting every electronic trail generated in America to hunt down terrorists.
“‘It takes what had been in the realm of paranoid conspiracy theorists and puts it in the realm of a potential reality — right here and now,’ said Jody Patilla, a consultant for the digital security company @Stake, and a former data analyst at the national security agency.”
The New York Times reported on Jan. 24, 2003 in “Senate Rejects Privacy Project” that: “The Senate voted today to bar deployment of a Pentagon project to search for terrorists by scanning information in Internet mail and in the commercial databases of health, financial and travel companies here and abroad.”
SOURCE:
http://www.accuracy.org/release/john-poindexters-plan-for-total-information-awareness-in-effect-by-another-name/
= new reply since forum marked as read