Pointing to Poindexter
Common Sense
POINTING TO POINDEXTER
U.S. Term Limits Daily Radio Commentary #788
by Paul Jacob
Release Date: February 20, 2003
As ye sow, so shall ye reap. So, watch what you sow.
Total Information Awareness, or TIA, is the Pentagon's attempt to find
a way to analyze all the transaction data of all U.S. residents. That
means our bank transactions, phone records, credit card purchases, you
name it. The goal is to toss all this data into a single software bin
and then run some kind of algorithm on it. To see which of us is doing
the kinds of things terrorists do.
TIA is thankfully not in effect yet. It is a work in progress that
would need congressional authorization to be implemented. Of course,
for such surveillance to "work," terrorists would have to be
cooperative and maintain familiar patterns of activity. The software
problems are also humongous. It's hard to build software that can read
minds. The other little thing is that everybody's constitutional rights
would have to be ignored if anything like this ever comes to pass.
A group on the Internet has decided to turn the tables on the staff of
Total Information Awareness and project leader John Poindexter. They
say if these guys want to spy on us, we're going to spy on them. So
they have been posting private information and sightings of TIA staff
on the web for all to see. If Poindexter buys a gallon of milk and
somebody associated with the site happens to observe him doing it, a
report goes online.
I think this kind of spying and harassment is wrong. We ought not do
this sort of thing. If we do it unto others, they just might turn
around and do it unto us.
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