What is the Total Information Awareness (TIA) Program?
TIA may be the closest thing to a true “Big Brother” program that has ever been seriously contemplated in the United States. It is based on a vision of pulling together as much information as possible about as many people as possible into an “ultra-large-scale” database, making that information available to government officials, and sorting through it to try to identify terrorists. Since the amount of public and private information on our lives is growing by leaps and bounds every week, a government project that seeks to put all that information together is a radical and frightening thing. Who runs the program? TIA is run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a branch of the Department of Defense that works on military research. It is headed by John Poindexter, the former Reagan-era National Security Adviser known for his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal, who famously said that it was his duty to withhold information from Congress. Is this program unique? No.
