"Paranoia, will destroy ya....."

[Ripsnort]

http://www.startribune.com/stories/587/3647992.html

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- House and Senate negotiators have agreed that a
                 Pentagon project intended to detect terrorists by monitoring e-mail and
                 commercial databases for health, financial and travel information cannot be
                 used against Americans.

                 The conferees also agreed to restrict further research on the program without
                 extensive consultation with Congress.

                 House leaders agreed with Senate fears about the threat to personal privacy
                 posed by the Pentagon program, known as Total Information Awareness
                 (TIA). So they accepted a Senate provision in the omnibus spending bill
                 passed last month, said Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., who heads the defense
                 appropriations subcommittee.

                 Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., senior Democrat on the subcommittee, said of the
                 program, "Jerry's against it, and I'm against it, so we kept the Senate
                 amendment." Of the Pentagon, he said, "They've got some crazy people over
                 there."

                 The only obstacles to the provision becoming law would be the failure of the
                 conferees to reach agreement on the overall spending bill in which it is
                 included, or a successful veto of the bill by President Bush.

                 Lt. Cmdr. Donald Sewell, a Pentagon spokesman, defended the program,
                 saying, "The Department of Defense still feels that it's a tool that can be used
                 to alert us to terrorist acts before they occur." He added, "It's not a program
                 that snoops into American citizens' privacy."

                 One important factor in the breadth of the opposition is the fact that the
                 project is headed by retired Adm. John Poindexter. Several members of
                 Congress have said he is an unwelcome symbol because he was convicted of
                 lying to Congress when he was President Ronald Reagan's national security
                 adviser. That his conviction was reversed on the grounds that he had been
                 given immunity for the testimony in which he lied did not mitigate
                 congressional opinion, they said.

                 The conferees' decision spells almost complete failure for a last-minute
                 Pentagon effort, begun Friday, to protect TIA by establishing advisory
                 committees to oversee it.

                 TIA would enable a team of intelligence analysts to gather and view
                 information from databases, pursue links between individuals and groups,
                 respond to automatic alerts, and share information, all from their individual
                 computers.

                 It could link such different electronic sources as video feeds from airport
                 surveillance cameras, credit card transactions, airline reservations and records
                 of telephone calls. The data would be filtered through software that would
                 constantly seek suspicious patterns.

                 The program could be employed in support of lawful military operations
                 outside the United States and lawful foreign intelligence operations conducted
                 against non-U.S. citizens.

                 The action was praised by Democrats and Republicans and by outside groups
                 on both the political right and left.

[ra]

Now terrorists will have to become citizens to avoid federal monitoring of their transactions.   And we all know that getting citizenship takes hours.

ra

[Naso]

TIA would enable a team of intelligence analysts to gather and view
information from databases, pursue links between individuals and groups,
respond to automatic alerts, and share information, all from their individual
computers.

It could link such different electronic sources as video feeds from airport
surveillance cameras, credit card transactions, airline reservations and records
of telephone calls. The data would be filtered through software that would
constantly seek suspicious patterns.

Echelon!!

[Innominate]

Step 1. Get the technology in place, if you need to agree not to use it for anything fine.
Step 2. use said technology for whatever you originally agreed t use it for.
Step 3. Once people are used to said technology, it's scope of use can be expanded to include whatever you like.

[bounder]

Originally posted by Innominate
Step 1. Get the technology in place, if you need to agree not to use it for anything fine.
Step 2. use said technology for whatever you originally agreed t use it for.
Step 3. Once people are used to said technology, it's scope of use can be expanded to include whatever you like.

aka 'boiling a frog'.

[ra]

aka 'boiling a frog'.

Stop French-bashing.