"or how I learned to stop worrying and love Bush's TIA."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation also is at work in these areas:

https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying

Thank you for an outstanding OP, Pholus! You're doing the kind of work outlined in the First Amendment that makes democracy possible.

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/

they claimed to have dropped it. I guess they didn't they lied, what else is new?

But ssshhh, it's all okay now, our side is in charge and will always be in charge so we'll never have to worry that they would do this to US. We are on THEIR team!!

Does that sound familiar to anyone? I love to tell those who defended Bush back then, 'I told you so, we warned you that your side would not always be in charge'.

It's like a see-saw isn't it, our team their team etc.

I'm with the Constitution so it doesn't matter which team is doing it, I'm screwed I guess, either way.

Over the past decade, has anyone ever once heard that Congress was defunding any defense or intelligence programs? A good rule of thumb is that, if Congress doesn't specifically name a program for defunding, it lives. This comes from years of waiting to hear if my jobs would survive another year when awaiting budget authorization bill results.

Perhaps they didn't perform as good as InTrade did at the time?

I remember at the time several stories about the wisdom of crowds motivated by the risk to their imaginary cash investments. You can even feel a certain truthiness to it, but at the time I was wondering how crowd facing the same lack of hard information as a single person could choose an outcome any more wisely.

Certainly Intrade had its moments around elections. Perhaps there was use if you just asked the right kind of question and took the trading as some kind of meta-poll. I just hope we didn't spent TOO much cash on that.