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

[Pholus]

Remember the days of Total Information Awareness? With that cool Orwellian logo and "Yer either wit us or agin us?":



It is alive and well, at least 75% of it and probably more. Here is a scorecard. Please help me refind this list with what you know.

I started from the wikipedia article describing the program:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office#Bio-Surveillance

Then I searched to find evidence of the program still continuing. Codenames might come and go but buzzwords/jargon are forever. Just search google for the technology and add DARPA to cut down the commercial products offering the same things.

So how much of Bush's legacy are we dealing with and even defending here?

1) HumanID -- Continued
http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases/2013/02/12.aspx
http://cawnps.blogspot.com/2009/12/darpa-challenge.html

2) Evidence Extraction and Link Discovery -- Continued
http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Programs/Anomaly_Detection_at_Multiple_Scales_%28ADAMS%29.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center

3) Genisys -- Continued
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-14/u-s-agencies-said-to-swap-data-with-thousands-of-firms.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center

4) Scalable Social Network Analysis -- Continued Given this at least...
http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Programs/Social_Media_in_Strategic_Communication_%28SMISC%29.aspx

5) Futures Markets Applied to Prediction (FutureMAP) -- Stopped?
Actually seems to have closed down.

6) TIDES -- Probably continuing?
Folded into Babylon's successor it would seem.

7) Genoa / Genoa II -- Continuing
http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Programs/Insight.aspx

8) Wargaming the Asymmetric Environment (WAE) -- Unknown, but this seems to apply
http://cawnps.blogspot.com/2009/12/darpa-challenge.html

9) Effective Affordable Reusable Speech-to-text -- Certainlty
Siri came from somewhere.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/03/darpa-speech/

10) Babylon -- Continued
http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Programs/Broad_Operational_Language_Translation_%28BOLT%29.aspx

11) Bio-Surveillance -- Continued
http://www.pri.org/stories/health/global-health/monitoring-infectious-diseases-online-on-twitter-gives-early-warning-of-outbreaks-13493.html

12) Communicator -- Possibly?
http://www.nrl.navy.mil/aic/im4/DiscourseforHuman-ComputerDialog.php

[Octafish]

1. ThinThread

Last edited Thu Jun 27, 2013, 04:10 PM - Edit history (2)

US spy device 'tested on NZ public'

by David Fisher
New Zealand Herald, May 25, 2013

A high-tech United States surveillance tool which sweeps up all communications without a warrant was sent to New Zealand for testing on the public, according to an espionage expert.

The tool was called ThinThread and it worked by automatically intercepting phone, email and internet information.

ThinThread was highly valued by those who created it because it could handle massive amounts of intercepted information. It then used snippets of data to automatically build a detailed picture of targets, their contacts and their habits for the spy organisation using it.

Those organisations were likely to include the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) after Washington, DC-based author Tim Shorrock revealed ThinThread was sent to New Zealand for testing in 2000-2001.

Mr Shorrock, who has written on intelligence issues for 35 years, said the revolutionary ThinThread surveillance tool was sent to New Zealand by the US National Security Agency. The GCSB is the US agency's intelligence partner - currently under pressure for potentially illegal wide-spread spying on the public."

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10886031

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.

[Octafish]

2. Hey, DU! TIA by any other name stinks just as sweet! What Coleen Rowley said...

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/

[Pholus]

7. How did I miss that -- thanks! :) nt

[sabrina 1]

8. I remember that. TIA! Remember how much of a riot Democrats caused over that? So much so that

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.

[Skidmore]

3. Well du'h...

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.

[Pholus]

4. You know, it looks the the predictive market thing actually ended though...

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

[Skidmore]

5. That made no sense whatsoever.

[Pholus]

6. My reply, or the predictive market thing?

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.