<nettime> Total Information Awareness

["roya.jakoby" <roya@girlfish.net>]

It was reported that Admiral John M. Poindexter, who was convicted in the
Iran-Contra affair in 1990 but later acquitted on a technicality, joined
the Bush Administration earlier this year as head of the Office of
Information Awareness at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Poindexter is in charge of a new system called Total Information
Awareness, which would permit the military to spy on the civilian
population of the United States without search warrants by scanning
personal information such as email, credit-card statements, banking and
medical records, and travel documents for patterns that suggest criminal
or terrorist activities. Deployment of the surveillance technology would
require new legislation, since the military traditionally has not been
allowed to spy on ordinary American citizens. "This could be the perfect
storm for civil liberties in America," said Marc Rotenberg, director of
the Electronic Privacy Information Center, "The vehicle is the Homeland
Security Act, the technology is Darpa, and the agency is the FBI. The
outcome is a system of national surveillance of the American public."

(as read in HARPER'S WEEKLY Newsletter, November 12, 2002)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Harper's Magazine
http://www.harpers.org




#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net