EOTO Total Information Awareness Blog #10
Total Information Awareness was a mass detection program founded by the United States Information Awareness Office. It was known by this name from February through May of 2003, until being changed to the name Terrorism Information Awareness. The name Total Information Awareness worried a lot of people because this program was the biggest surveillance program in the history of the United States. It was intended to identify potential terrorist threats to our country while they were conspiring and hopefully prevent future attacks.
Total Information Awareness was a great idea because it could save our country from acts of terror, but it also has a negative trade off for American citizens. One of the biggest problems was that this program killed privacy in the United States. Every moment of every person's life would be surveillanced and stored for government officials to use... or abuse. Abuse of this program was another main issue. Some police officers had access to the data base and would use it to track spouses, intimidate political opponents, and other forms of misuse that can be harmful to citizens.
Congress defunded the Total Information Awareness office in late 2003. Many media outlets reported that the program was being used to gather non-terrorist information on all citizens in the United States. The negative repercussions of access to our citizens information is detrimental to our established freedoms
The graphic above gives a detailed explanation of the software used for Total Information Awareness. It illustrates how Total Information Awareness is programed to detect potential terrorist threats, but also gain access to all of our personal information and keep citizens under government surveillance at all times.
Total Information Awareness is thought of very similarly to Big Brother and George Orwell's novel, 1984. It is associated with fear that someone is always watching you. Total Information Awareness was often criticized for being too similar to the surveillance programs and techniques from the dystopian novel.
When thinking about Total Information Awareness, the main question to keep in mind is "how much of our privacy are we willing to give up to potentially avoid terrorist acts?"
Personally, I find this program terrifying. The idea that the government could collect every possible piece of information on every single citizen and abuse it goes against so much of what this country is established on. The founding fathers created this country so that people could have freedom from the government. this program breaches that freedom. I think Total Information Awareness could have been a good idea if it solely focused on stopping terrorist attacks, but the risks associated with the program out weigh the benefits.
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