Over the last few months, it’s become increasingly clear that the NSA’s eavesdropping is intertwined with Total Information Awareness, the notorious uber-database project. In the new National Journal, scoopster Shane Harris shows just how tightly the two are knotted together.
Bottom line: after Congress supposedly pulled the plug on TIA, the NSAs Advanced Research and Development Activity “took over TIA and carried on the experimental network in late 2003.”
ARDA continued vetting new tools and even kept the aggressive experiment schedule… But it discontinued some programs, most notably a multimillion-dollar effort to build privacy-protection technologies. ARDA also abandoned the effort to build audit trails in TIA, which would have permanently recorded any abuse by users. The experimental networks name was changed from TIA, to erase any connection to its past. Today its called the Research Development and Experimental Collaboration (RDEC, pronounced ARdeck). The NSA is the biggest player…
In an interview, Lewis Shepherd, the chief of the Defense Intelligence Agencys Requirements and Research Group, said that RDEC is “the most successful attempt at bringing together a wide variety of analysts and agencies to work and think outside of the box collaboratively,” specifically on counter-terrorism. “[It] opens access to a variety of data sources to different tools that havent been able to access that data.”
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I am not sure that questioning the use of TIA as a tool is considered out of line… nor partisan if reported.
Some of the questions resulting from the government’s collection of information on Americans is how will it be used. In this instance, an audit trail is not in place. No one can trace who puts information into or accesses the information. The possibility of anyone going back in and removing invalid information is pretty slim.
Innocent people can have their lives permanently effected by erroneous information entered. How would they ever know or have the information removed because they have no idea it is secret information within a government database that is hanging around their neck. Where are the safeguards? Is their an appeal process? How can a person appeal if it isn’t admitted that they are in the database?
The concerns about the TIA that were raised by Congress does not mean that the government should just move it to a different agency.
Regardless of some people’s feelings about the Congress, they are our elected officials who are their to represent us. Fortunately, they have to face re-election every 2 years in the house which means that they are a bit more accountable to us than others.
We can and should find and defeat terrorists with every legal tool we can. If we give up the checks and balances of our government, a representative government answerable to the people, the presses right to report, the privacy of our citizens, our rules of law, the right to assemble and protest the actions of this government… then exactly what about America are we fighting to protect?
The mistake many make is to confuse disagreement with the methods and the focus of our resources in this battle against terrorists… not in the battle itself. This adminstration, even before 9/11 used secrecy to keep the American people from knowing who was involved in OUR energy policy formation. If they cannot trust us with that, then how can we trust them to be honest when they say something really is in our “national security” interests?
I do understand the nature of the enemy. I do know what is at stake. I also know that this nation does not need to destroy everything that makes us unique as a nation in order to preserve it. Yes, they can crash planes into buildings or try to gas subways in New York.
At what point do we stop sacrificing our rights and our way of life to provide physical protection for ourselves? Are their limits to what we will justify? If we say yes, the laws of our land establish what limits we have, then we have to respect the will of the Congress since they are the ones that create the laws. Or, do we just respect the laws we agree with… and then which laws are those and who decides?
I for one, refuse to throw away everything that makes America what it is because of the threat of terrorists. Too many people have lived in fear for too long… it is not just terrorists but people who have surrendered even our neighborhoods in urban areas out of fear for standing up.