Week 12 Key Post

 Total Information Awareness

What is it? 

Total Information Awareness, otherwise known as Terrorism Information Awareness, was a 240 million dollar program created after the tragic event of 9/11 in order to prevent terrorist attacks from happening in the future (privacysos). The TIA used predictive policing to connect specific information about an individual in order to anticipate and prevent an act of terrorism. They collect, “government records of all kinds and individuals' medical and financial records, political beliefs, travel history, prescriptions, buying habits, communications (phone calls, e-mails and Web surfing), school records, personal and family associations, and so on,” (aclu). Terrifyingly, this gave the government complete access to everything about a person, allowing for a digital profile of an individual to be made that predicted their patterns within their day to day life. Through these developed patterns, the government was able to hypothesize exactly where one would go, if they were at high risk of committing a crime, and/or discriminate against those visiting from foreign countries, especially the Middle East due to tensions caused by 9/11. Luckily, this program was defunded by congress after receiving heavy criticism from the people and the press for trying to convey total surveillance over the American people (its technologies have not gone away, but I will get into that later).

How does this affect society?

The TIA would have keep a digital profile on all persons, regardless of sex, race, religion, and gender. If one was an American citizen, the government was going to collect as much information on them as possible. However, this program specifically targeted people that were deemed more likely to commit an act of terrorism, meaning that people from the Middle East were especially targeted due to the events of 9/11. As a result, if this department was still functioning, there would have been a surge of detainment of people from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and other middle eastern countries with high threats of terrorism. Coupled with its xenophobic basis, the TIA would also destroy privacy in America.  A digital profile would be kept in a database somewhere with everyone's private information on it. If a foreign invader got their hands on these profiles, they would know everything about a specific person's life. Not to mention, the government could also sell this information to foreign powers, like the United Kingdom or Russia, in order to turn a profit or gain more information about a specific citizen. In a sense, this would be directly correlated with the social credit found within China today. Finally, the TIA was prone to misinformation. According to Senator Patrick Leahy, "“a mistake in a government database could cost a person his or her job, sacrifice their liberty, and wreak havoc on their life and reputation,” (privacysos). Let this sink in for a moment. One wrong data entry could lead to the detainment of an individual who is being punished for a crime they have not even committed. This sounds identical to a prior restraint, which have been deemed unconstitutional long ago. What if one day you wake up to realize you have lost everything due to one simple mistake, one simple generalization, one simple error of another person?

Any benefits of the TIA?

NO! There is absolutely no benefit to giving up your privacy for speculative protection. Even putting any personal bias aside, the program is inherently unconstitutional as it breaks the 4th amendment by conducting an illegal search and surveillance on the American people. One could say a benefit of this program was that when it was eventually defunded, congress passed a bill that banned the use of any programs/technology developed under the TIA to be used in any other government program. Sadly, today these technologies have trickled down into the foreign administration department, as well as the NSA who constantly spies on what we do. Almost more horrifying is that fact that companies have picked up on these TIA technologies and created targeted ads.

Now, the development of targeted ads is quite similar to that of the collection of information the TIA used when it was still operating: tracking what you purchase, how long you look at a specific item, listening in on your conversations to see if you say that you need something, storing your search history, and much more. Worst part about all of it, people willingly sign into these data mining features. While the stakes may be different (the government can arrest you and Facebook/Google can't), this tech giants still have the ability to work with the government and give out your information, for a price of course (Renee Diresta). Companies have the ability to create contracts with the government to work with them on specific cases giving up the information they have collected that a person has signed away willingly and knowingly. We need to read the fine print in the terms and conditions of using an application or social media outlet, otherwise we unknowingly sign away all of our privacy to a company just to post a silly meme, play a tedious mobile game, or post a political message for everyone to see.