Total Information Awareness

            The United States were forever changed after 9/11 which was the catalyst even for the conflict in the Middle East. While there was a war occurring on the other side of the globe, there was another, silent war happening back home, the war against terrorism. According to the government, the best way to stop terrorism was to stop it before it can even happen. This led to the creation of Total Information Awareness, the first reactionary program proposed after 9/11 in 2002. The program was later renamed to Terrorism Information Awareness.    

        The main goal of the Total Information Awareness program was to collect data and information about each person currently residing or staying in the US and use the data to gauge their probability of committing a terrorist attack. The program was run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and was headed by John Poindexter, a national security advisor in the Reagan Administration. According to the American Civil Liberties Union,the data collected by the program would include but was not limited to: medical/financial records, political beliefs, travel history, prescriptions, buying habits, phone calls/web history, school records and personal family associations. Using these pieces of information, certain analysts would look at classified sections of data and make the decision on the risk of each person.

Initially the program was thought to be similar to another system already in place called CAPS II, a program which gathered information on Americans flying all over the world. This program was seen as less controversial due to its higher appeal to citizens. The goal of CAPS II was also to stop any potential terrorism. 

Though the program is no longer active, there are still influences being felt by citizens today. Many people have raised concerns about unconstitutional governmental oversight in our lives, and this one was thought to be too much of an overstep. However, it had the benefit of being proposed during a time of severe paranoia of terrorism. There has been a lot of debate over the ethicality of the program and whether or not it would violate the people’s rights to privacy. The National Academy has an article about TIA and how it was designed to keep privacy a priority. There were systems set in place to make sure the analysts looking at the data would never know information about the person to include any bias in the assessment. This was a time before automation was commonplace and the plan was for government employees to be the ones to make all decisions with potential terrorists.

At the time of proposal, it was clear there could be dangerous precedent set and the TIA program could have been used for motivations outside stopping terrorism. Which is why the proposal to Senate included a point about the usages of the program, “the Total Information Awareness program should not be used to develop technologies for use in conducting intelligence activities or law enforcement activities against United States persons without appropriate consultation with Congress or without clear adherence to principles to protect civil liberties and privacy” S. Amdt 59, 2003. This was to make sure the program was only used what it was intended for due to the high amount of sensitive information.