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Appendix J: The Total/Terrorist Information Awareness Program
Pages 239-249

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From page 239...
... Later renamed the Terrorism Information Awareness program, TIA was a research and development program intended to counter terrorism through prevention by developing and integrating information analysis, collaboration, and decision-support tools with language-translation, data-searching, pattern-recognition, and privacy-protection technologies.2 The program included the development of a prototype system/network to provide an environment for integrating technologies developed in the program and as a testbed for conducting experiments. Five threads for research investigation were to be pursued: secure collaborative problem-solving among disparate agencies and institutions, structured information-searching and pattern recognition based 1 This description of the TIA program is based on unclassified, public sources that are presumed to be authoritative because of their origin (for example, Department of Defense documents and speeches by senior program officials)
From page 240...
... , Total Information Awareness Program System Description Document, version 1.1, DARPA, Arlington, Va., July 19, 2002.
From page 241...
... In retrospect, it was discovered that they had taken actions that together could be seen 5 Defense Advanced Research Programs Agency (DARPA) , "Report to Congress Regarding the Terrorism Information Awareness Program: In response to Consolidated Appropriations Resolution, 2003, Pub.
From page 242...
... Notwithstanding any other provision of law, none of the funds ap propriated or otherwise made available in this or any other Act may be obligated for the Terrorism Information Awareness Program: Provided, That this limitation shall not apply to the program hereby authorized for processing, analysis, and collaboration tools for counterterrorism foreign intelligence, as described in the Classified Annex accompanying the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2004, for which funds are expressly provided in the National Foreign Intelligence Program for counterterrorism foreign intelligence purposes.
From page 243...
... Thus, many other data mining activities supported today by the U.S. government continue to raise the same issues as did the TIA program: the potential utility of large-scale databases containing personal information for counterterrorism and law-enforcement purposes and the potential privacy impact of the use of such databases by law-enforcement and national-security authorities.
From page 244...
... 11 L Sweeney, "Privacy-preserving surveillance using selective revelation," LIDAP Work ing Paper 15, Carnegie Mellon University, 2005; updated journal version is J
From page 245...
... According to Golle et al., the device would provide: • Inference control to prevent unauthorized individuals from completing queries that would allow identification of ordinary citizens. • Access control to return sensitive identifying data only to authorized users.
From page 246...
... The claims of privacy protection and selective revelation continued with MATRIX and other data warehouse systems but without an attendant research program, and the federal government continues to plan for the use of data mining techniques in other initiatives, such as the Computer Assisted Passenger Pro 16 R Gopal, R
From page 247...
... Indeed, after heated debate, the Senate and House appropriations committees decided to terminate funding of the program. 20 On passage of the initial funding limitation, a leading critic of the TIA program, Senator Ron Wyden, declared: The Senate has now said that this program will not be allowed to grow without tough Congressional oversight and accountability, and that there will be checks on the government's ability to snoop on law-abiding Americans.21 The irony of the TIA debate is that although the funding for the TIA program was indeed terminated, both research on and deployment of data mining systems continue at various agencies (Appendix I, "Illustrative Government Data Mining Programs and Activity")
From page 248...
... Research on how large-scale data-analysis techniques, including data mining, could help the intelligence community to identify potential terrorists is certainly a reasonable endeavor. Assuming that initial research justifies additional effort on the basis of scientific standards of success, the work should continue, but it must be accompanied by a clear method for assessing the reliability of the results.
From page 249...
...  APPENDIX J John Poindexter, director of the DARPA office responsible for TIA, was aware of the policy questions and took notable steps to include in the technical research agenda various initiatives to build technical mechanisms that might minimize the privacy impact of the data mining capabilities being developed. In hindsight, however, a more comprehensive analysis of both the technical and larger public-policy considerations associated with the program was necessary to address Congress's concerns about privacy impact.


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