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Total Information, Total Confusion

Beat the Devil

By Alexander Cockburn

This article appeared in the December 16, 2002 edition of The Nation.

November 26, 2002

So let's join Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology Edward "Pete" Aldridge at a recent Pentagon press briefing, where he's addressing concerns about the Pentagon's bold new plan to have Adm. John Poindexter personally review exactly what you bought in Safeway last week and all the dirty movies you ordered up in Motel 6 last time you were on the road.

Aldridge: "We established a project within DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, that would develop an experimental prototype--underline, experimental prototype--which we call the Total Information Awareness System. The purpose of TIA would be to determine the feasibility of searching vast quantities of data to determine links and patterns indicative of terrorist activities."

Aldridge reels off the TIA research menu: rapid language translation, using computer voice-recognition techniques; discovery of connections between transactions (involving passports, visas, work permits, driver's licenses and credit cards, of such things as airline tickets, rental cars and gun and chemical purchases) and events (such as arrests or suspicious activities).

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About Alexander Cockburn

Alexander Cockburn has been The Nation's "Beat the Devil" columnist since 1984. He is the author or co-author of several books, including the best-selling collection of essays Corruptions of Empire (1987), and a contributor to many publications, from The New York Review of Books, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly and the Wall Street Journal to alternative publications such as In These Times and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. With Jeffrey St. Clair, he edits the newsletter and radical website CounterPunch, which have a substantial world audience. more...

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