This blog wrote about the TIA programme in an article called
The Infrastructure of Mass Surveillance that I first published in March 07 then again in October last year, and how UK Government and European anti-terrorism and surveillance policy was based upon the TIA programme. At the time I was called a conspiracy nut, an idiot, a scaremonger.
Today, comes a press release from the UCLA in the US, following a report that the NSA had revived the TIA programme after being banned by Congress in 2003.
Stunning New Report on Domestic NSA Dragnet Spying Confirms ACLU Surveillance Warnings (3/12/2008)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: 675-2312 or media@dcaclu.org
WASHINGTON – The American Civil Liberties
Union responded today to a stunning new report that the NSA has effectively
revived the Orwellian “Total Information
Awareness” domestic-spying program that was
banned by Congress in 2003. In response, the ACLU said that it was filing a
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for more information about the spying.
And, the group announced that it was moving its “Surveillance Clock” one minute closer to midnight.
“Congress shut down TIA because it represented a massive and
unjustified governmental intrusion into the personal lives of Americans,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the
Washington Legislative Office of the ACLU. “Now we find out that the security agencies are
pushing ahead with the program anyway, despite that clear congressional
prohibition. The program described by current and former intelligence officials
in Monday's Wall Street Journal
could be modeled on Orwell’s Big
Brother.”
The ACLU said the new report confirmed its past warnings that the NSA was
engaging in extremely broad-based data mining that was violating the privacy of
vast numbers of Americans.
The Total Information Awareness (TIA) program was a mammoth data mining
program that envisioned programming computers to trawl through an extensive list
of databases containing personal information about Americans – including communications, medical, travel,
education and financial data – in an attempt
to detect supposedly “suspicious” patterns. Congress shut down the program amid
bipartisan objections that it was the most far-reaching domestic surveillance
proposal that had ever been offered.
“Year after year, we have warned that our great nation is turning
into a surveillance society where our every move is tracked and
monitored,” said Barry Steinhardt, Director of the ACLU’s Technology
and Liberty Project. “Now we have before us a program that appears to
do that very thing. It brings together numerous programs that we and
many others have fought for years, and it confirms what the ACLU has
been saying the NSA is up to: mass surveillance of Americans.”
Last year, the ACLU created its Surveillance Clock (www.aclu.org/clock) as a way to symbolize the
nation’s rapid descent toward a surveillance
society. Initially set to six minutes before midnight, the ACLU today moved it
up to five minutes before midnight to highlight the greater threat to privacy
Americans face in light of the NSA’s
activities.
According to the new Journal report, the NSA was engaging in broad
domestic spying operations that involve collecting and analyzing the personal
information of Americans in ways that are “essentially the same” as TIA. The elements that reportedly make up the
new spying encompass a variety of mass surveillance and data mining programs
about which the ACLU has previously warned, including:
TIA and other data mining programs.
- The NSA’s illegal wiretapping program,
the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP).
- The Patriot Act’s broadening of FBI power
to collect third-party personal information without a subpoena through Section
215 searches and National Security Letters.
- The Treasury Department’s expanded
surveillance of financial transactions through Cash Transaction Reporting and
Suspicious Activity Reporting.
- The CIA’s illegitimate access to the
SWIFT database to monitor international financial transactions.
- DHS’s efforts to increase collection and
monitoring of airline passenger data.
- Partnerships between these government agencies and private sector entities to
collect and monitor customers’ data and
transactions.
The erosion of privacy through the judicial creation of a distinction between
content and “transactional data” (such as the recipients of e-mails or phone
calls and the times and dates of each communication) through the Patriot Act and
prior developments.
“Congress needs to investigate immediately whether its will has been
thwarted, and the media needs to give this program the attention it
deserves as a radical departure from the privacy that Americans have
always expected,” said Fredrickson. “Just how many times is Congress
going to sit back and watch this administration run roughshod over its
prerogatives?”
The FOIA request the ACLU filed today is intended to gain information about
the “role that the NSA plays as a hub for
the collection, analysis and distribution”
of “transactional information of
Americans.” It seeks information from the
NSA as well as the FBI, CIA, the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence, and the Departments of Treasury, Justice, Defense, and Homeland
Security.
In 2006, the ACLU published a summary of what it believed the NSA was doing,
based on the various media reports citing current and former intelligence
officials. In the piece, entitled “Eavesdropping 101,” the ACLU warned that the NSA was not just
carrying out warrantless wiretaps on selected individuals, but probably carrying
out broader data dragnets that violated the privacy of millions of Americans.
This prospect has not always remained in focus during the debates over the
agency’s illegal spying.
“We now know that TIA lives,” said
Steinhardt. “The question is, does American
privacy live? And will Congress
defend it? This program will be a test case; may we prove worthy of the freedom
we have inherited.”
The ACLU white paper “Eavesdropping 101″ is online at
www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/23989res20060131.html
Other information about NSA spying can be found at
www.aclu.org/nsa
Information about TIA can be found at
http://www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/14956res20040116.html
To read the ACLU's FOIA request, go to:
http://www.aclu.org/privacy/gen/34443leg20080312.html
