NEW YORK--A Pentagon data-mining project to sift through corporate and
government records and spot suspicious activity is necessary to thwart
terrorism, two proponents said on Wednesday afternoon.
The Total Information Awareness (TIA)
project, being developed by the U.S. Defense Department, is an example of
using the latest technology to guard against future terrorist attacks,
representatives of two conservative groups said during a debate at the
Computers, Freedom and Privacy
Conference. If fully implemented, TIA would link databases
from sources such as credit card companies, medical insurers and motor
vehicle agencies in hopes of identifying terrorist activities.
Heather MacDonald, a lawyer and
fellow at the Manhattan Institute, dismissed criticism of TIA as
"hysterical vociferous cries" from privacy advocates who oppose
making government more efficient at snaring wrongdoers and protecting
innocent Americans. "If you don't trust government to protect us
from terrorists, good luck doing it yourself," MacDonald said.
"We have to use every legal mechanism in our power to make sure we
don't have a 9-11 type of attack," MacDonald said. She accused her
opponents of taking "a Luddite approach that says al-Qaida can get
its hands on the best possible technology to attack us, but we're stuck
with (an) outdated mechanism."
Over the last few months, TIA has become a
lightning rod for criticism, with
Republican and Democratic legislators speaking out against it on privacy
and security grounds. On Feb. 20, as part of a large spending bill for
the federal government, Congress approved additional scrutiny of research
and development on the TIA project.
Those restrictions do not halt TIA
research. They would permit dozens of grants from the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to be fully funded if DARPA
sends Congress a "schedule for proposed research and
development" that includes a privacy evaluation, or if President
George W. Bush certifies that TIA is necessary for national security.
During Wednesday's debate, opponents of TIA characterized the system as
unacceptable, unworkable, and liable to be abused by people with access
to it. It's a "sharp departure from the long-standing principle that
you have the right to be left alone," said Katie Corrigan,
legislative counsel for the American Civil
Liberties Union.
Corrigan said it was difficult to debate TIA because it remained an
"amorphous and to date very secret concept" that the Bush
administration has not discussed in any detail.
MacDonald, from the Manhattan Institute, said critics were guilty of
"knee-jerk opposition" and spreading "patent
falsehoods" about how the system would work if implemented.
Michael Scardaville, a homeland
security analyst at the Heritage Foundation, said: "Can it be
abused? Yes. Is that what DARPA is trying to do? Absolutely not...It is
not the Orwellian monster described by many critics
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