Culture
terns of this siege mentality. Four months “A lot of it’s in the [National Security levels of technological sophistication and
after a handful of fanatical hijackers made Agency], continuing in much more expertise.
good on intentions that old-fashioned secret forms.” “We’ve built our notion of privacy

intelligence-gathering methods had Weinberg of Defense Technology around data itself”—that is, information
Fluxion
detected well before the day that would International, who was much more sym- expressed as numbers or words—“but
come to define his presidency, the Bush pathetic to the goals of the Information with these new technologies, there’s

administration launched the Information Awareness Office, agreed. “Congres- data beyond data,” he said. “The con-
issue
Awareness Office and the Total Informa- sional action didn’t really end TIA,” she structs used in ordinary privacy law just 4
tion Awareness Program through Darpa said. “It just moved to other intelligence don’t work.”
and named Poindexter as the new agencies.” Thwarting complex new forms of
office’s director. Through the grant-making initiatives of electronic surveillance would also require
Poindexter’s tenure was brief. The Darpa, the objectives of the Total Informa- a mass of political will that Tien doesn’t
New York Times first published informa- tion Awareness Program have also contin- expect to see in the current Congress.
tion on the TIA plan to employ informa- ued to thrive in academic settings like the “Even with the Democrats in charge,
tion technologies to engage in vast Inter- Integrated Media Systems Center. everything is geared toward [the presi-
net data-mining operations in February “TIA’s going to happen,” said the dential election in] 2008,” he said. “From
2002, and by November of that year, a former Wyden staffer. “It’s just not going congressional staffs, I haven’t heard
diverse array of activists and commen- to be called TIA, and it might not be the anything about renewing inquiries.”
tators—from the ACLU to conservative government doing it.” Meanwhile, the impulse to cloak an
columnist William Safire—had denounced ever-widening surveillance apparatus in
TIA as the precursor to an Orwellian mass That’s Not My Department secrecy only deepens the odd pairing of
surveillance system. Powell isn’t troubled by what goes paranoia and entitlement in the political
In January 2003, a year after the Infor- on in the heads of apparatchiks at the culture that sustains it.
mation Awareness Office was created— Department of Defense who fund “Consider the position surveillance puts
and after its signature effort was renamed research projects at the Integrated the viewer in,” said Chad Harris, a research
the Terrorism Information Awareness Media Systems Center. In response to fellow in the Department of Communica-
Program—U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold a question about the effect of the Total tion at the University of California, San
(D-Wisconsin) introduced legislation that Information Awareness controversy on Diego, and a contributor to the journal Sur-
eventually suspended TIA activities. the ethical culture of IMSC, he quoted a veillance and Society. “If you’re the viewer,
“The flap over Total Information Aware- line from a song by Tom Lehrer, who in you’re totally dominant over what you’re
ness was mostly a PR problem,” said Sha- 1965 satirized one of the most infamous looking at, like an omniscient being.”
ron Weinberg, editor-in-chief of Defense scientific minds of the Cold War: “‘Once That conclusion may sound overly dra-
Technology International. “The media the rockets go up, who cares where they matic. Well, it is and it isn’t. Recall Pow-
made too big a deal out of it because come down? That’s not my department,’ ell’s remark that, when you’re interacting
Darpa didn’t feel PR was necessary.” says Wernher von Braun.” with a networked electronic environment,
Carole Grunberg, a former legislative In other words, if the military-industrial “You have to assume there’s not a whole
director for Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon)— complex wants to fund research into lot that’s private.”
the privacy-rights watchdog who co-spon- sensory surveillance technologies as well These days, the sweep of that state-
sored the legislation that shut down the as the sophisticated Internet architectures ment includes not just your Social Security
Information Awareness Office—offered a required to make the reach of those number and the content of your e-mail
different perspective on Poindexter’s plan technologies nearly global, why should a but also the pattern of your thoughts and
to turn the Internet into a planet-wide humble university administrator turn down feelings—a state of affairs that makes the
surveillance apparatus. a government grant? prospect of a government obsessed with
“They were just going to turn people That kind of sangfroid is vexing for Lee ferreting out “thought-crime” not nearly
upside down and see what falls out of Tien, a senior attorney for privacy issues difficult enough to imagine.
their pockets,” she said. “Everybody at the Electronic Freedom Foundation, This disturbing fact of modern life
thought this was not something the U.S. an advocacy group that works to protect might cause you to shake your fist at the
should be doing and that it was probably privacy rights on the Internet. Bush administration, but you’ve already
unconstitutional.” “You’re trying to hit a moving target,” looked too far to find the culprit. Like the
Another former Wyden staffer— Tien said. “The research on speech president who has given us such eerily
currently an advisor on national security understanding and sensory surveillance Orwellian-sounding institutions as the
issues to a Democratic presidential can- is most disturbing, but you can’t stop War on Terror and the Department of
didate and who spoke on the condition science. All that stuff is happening at the Homeland Security, a ubiquitous elec-
of anonymity—said that while the legisla- corporate and academic levels, and look- tronic surveillance apparatus intent on our
tion enacted in 2003 stipulated that TIA ing for patterns and making inferences inmost thoughts is the creature—not the
activities were not to be dispersed to serves a dual purpose, both commercial creator—of our collective American neu-
other agencies, information aggregation and surveillance.” rosis. The best way to alter the course of
and data-mining have simply become Tien said that it’s possible to ensure our surveillance society is for everyone to
more deeply shrouded operations within that new information technologies aren’t get wise to the things that a super-cooled
the Department of Defense. used by the government for surveillance quantum mainframe already knows: that
“The overall goal of the program did purposes, but doing so would require we Americans are really scared, really
not end,” the former Wyden staffer said. congressional staffs to develop very high angry, and very easily distracted.
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