by Wolfmoon Lady » Tue Feb 28, 2006 1:10 am
Okay, if this has been posted somewhere around here, I'm sorry for duplicating it. As for the contents, I have no idea how to verify the information. I didn't really think they'd give up on the TIA project anyway. Is there anything we can do to protect our privacy if TPTB really want to know about us?<br><br>Morgan<br><!--EZCODE HR START--><hr /><!--EZCODE HR END--><br><br>TIA Lives On <br>By Shane Harris, National Journal<br>© National Journal Group Inc.<br>Thursday, Feb. 23, 2006 <br><br>A controversial counter-terrorism program, which lawmakers halted more than two years ago amid outcries from privacy advocates, was stopped in name only and has quietly continued within the intelligence agency now fending off charges that it has violated the privacy of U.S. citizens.<br> <br>Research under the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program -- which developed technologies to predict terrorist attacks by mining government databases and the personal records of people in the United States -- was moved from the Pentagon's research-and-development agency to another group, which builds technologies primarily for the National Security Agency, according to documents obtained by National Journal and to intelligence sources familiar with the move. The names of key projects were changed, apparently to conceal their identities, but their funding remained intact, often under the same contracts. <br><br>It is no secret that some parts of TIA lived on behind the veil of the classified intelligence budget. However, the projects that moved, their new code names, and the agencies that took them over haven't previously been disclosed. Sources aware of the transfers declined to speak on the record for this story because, they said, the identities of the specific programs are classified. <br><br>Two of the most important components of the TIA program were moved to the Advanced Research and Development Activity, housed at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Md., documents and sources confirm. One piece was the Information Awareness Prototype System, the core architecture that tied together numerous information extraction, analysis, and dissemination tools developed under TIA. The prototype system included privacy-protection technologies that may have been discontinued or scaled back following the move to ARDA. <br><br>A $19 million contract to build the prototype system was awarded in late 2002 to Hicks & Associates, a consulting firm in Arlington, Va., that is run by former Defense and military officials. Congress's decision to pull TIA's funding in late 2003 "caused a significant amount of uncertainty for all of us about the future of our work," Hicks executive Brian Sharkey wrote in an e-mail to subcontractors at the time.<br><br>"Fortunately," Sharkey continued, "a new sponsor has come forward that will enable us to continue much of our previous work." Sources confirm that this new sponsor was ARDA.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Along with the new sponsor came a new name. "We will be describing this new effort as 'Basketball,' " Sharkey wrote, apparently giving no explanation of the name's significance. Another e-mail from a Hicks employee, Marc Swedenburg, reminded the company's staff that "TIA has been terminated and should be referenced in that fashion."</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> <br><br>Sharkey played a key role in TIA's birth, when he and a close friend, retired Navy Vice Adm. John Poindexter, President Reagan's national security adviser, brought the idea to Defense officials shortly after the 9/11 attacks. The men had teamed earlier on intelligence-technology programs for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which agreed to host TIA and hired Poindexter to run it in 2002. In August 2003, Poindexter was forced to resign as TIA chief amid howls that his central role in the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-1980s made him unfit to run a sensitive intelligence program. <br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>It's unclear whether work on Basketball continues.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> Sharkey didn't respond to an interview request, and Poindexter said he had no comment about former TIA programs. But a publicly available Defense Department document, detailing various "cooperative agreements and other transactions" conducted in fiscal 2004, shows that Basketball was fully funded at least until the end of that year (September 2004). The document shows that the system was being tested at a research center jointly run by ARDA and SAIC Corp., a major defense and intelligence contractor that is the sole owner of Hicks & Associates. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>The document describes Basketball as a "closed-loop, end-to-end prototype system for early warning and decision-making," exactly the same language used in contract documents for the TIA prototype system when it was awarded to Hicks in 2002. An SAIC spokesman declined to comment for this story.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>Continue reading at <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2006/0223nj1.htm#" target="top">National Journal Weekly</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br> <br>See also:<br><br>Total Information Awareness Lives On Inside the National Security Agency<br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/27/1519235" target="top">Democracy Now!</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> - 02/27/06<br><br>More than two years ago Congress halted plans for a controversial plan called Total Information Awareness to create the world's largest surveillance database to track your phone calls, purchases, Internet usage, reading material, banking transactions. The National Journal has now revealed the program has quietly continued inside the NSA. <br><br>Listen to this Real Player clip:<br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12090.htm" target="top">informationclearinghouse.info/article12090.htm</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> <p></p><i></i>
