STALKING "THE THING"
3/12/2004
It's back. "The Thing That Just Won't Die" has returned in mutated form to terrorize the good people of our country, gorging itself on gargantuan fistfuls of our First and Fourth Amendment rights.
"The Thing" was once known as TIA--Total Information Awareness--the Orwellian/Frankensteinian creation of John Poindexter, the disgraced, convicted, and totally loopy former operative from the Reagan White House. Brought in from the cold by George W, Poindexter set up shop in a wing of the Pentagon called DARPA--Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
At DARPA, the maniacal Poindexter put together his TIA, a supercomputerized program to gather every scrap of data there is on everybody--from our bank accounts to video rentals, our medical histories to photos of protests we've attended. All of this was to be sifted and sorted, ostensibly to detect suspicious behavior that would tag someone as a possible terrorist.
Noting that this would make millions of Americans suspected terrorists and amount to a wholesale invasion of our people's privacy, the public screamed, congress cut-off TIA's funding, and Poindexter ultimately was forced back to Disgraceland.
But, wait...TIA didn't die. It metamorphosed from DARPA to ARDA--Advanced Research and Development Activity. While publicly pretending to kill TIA, congressional leaders had quietly funneled money to ARDA to resurrect TIA as The Thing, which is now pursuing the exact same assault on our privacy as TIA was, even using some of Poindexter's old crew.
ARDA says that its Thing can wolf down a "petabyte or more" of data. How much is that? A petabyte will hold 40 pages of text on every man, woman, and child in the world, with room left to get information on your dog and parakeet.
To help us finally drive a stake through the heart of this Thing, call the Center for Democracy and Technology: 202-637-9800.
"Office was cut, but data-mining work continues." Austin American-Statesman. February 23, 2004.
Jim Hightower
Hightower & Associates
1802 W. 6th Street
Austin, TX 78703
512-477-5588
[email protected]
http://www.jimhightower.com/air/read.asp?id=11318
3/12/2004
It's back. "The Thing That Just Won't Die" has returned in mutated form to terrorize the good people of our country, gorging itself on gargantuan fistfuls of our First and Fourth Amendment rights.
"The Thing" was once known as TIA--Total Information Awareness--the Orwellian/Frankensteinian creation of John Poindexter, the disgraced, convicted, and totally loopy former operative from the Reagan White House. Brought in from the cold by George W, Poindexter set up shop in a wing of the Pentagon called DARPA--Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
At DARPA, the maniacal Poindexter put together his TIA, a supercomputerized program to gather every scrap of data there is on everybody--from our bank accounts to video rentals, our medical histories to photos of protests we've attended. All of this was to be sifted and sorted, ostensibly to detect suspicious behavior that would tag someone as a possible terrorist.
Noting that this would make millions of Americans suspected terrorists and amount to a wholesale invasion of our people's privacy, the public screamed, congress cut-off TIA's funding, and Poindexter ultimately was forced back to Disgraceland.
But, wait...TIA didn't die. It metamorphosed from DARPA to ARDA--Advanced Research and Development Activity. While publicly pretending to kill TIA, congressional leaders had quietly funneled money to ARDA to resurrect TIA as The Thing, which is now pursuing the exact same assault on our privacy as TIA was, even using some of Poindexter's old crew.
ARDA says that its Thing can wolf down a "petabyte or more" of data. How much is that? A petabyte will hold 40 pages of text on every man, woman, and child in the world, with room left to get information on your dog and parakeet.
To help us finally drive a stake through the heart of this Thing, call the Center for Democracy and Technology: 202-637-9800.
"Office was cut, but data-mining work continues." Austin American-Statesman. February 23, 2004.
Jim Hightower
Hightower & Associates
1802 W. 6th Street
Austin, TX 78703
512-477-5588
[email protected]
http://www.jimhightower.com/air/read.asp?id=11318
Now the footstepping on american privacy was inevitable. Of course its not right. It seems like they are going.....wait i will finish this tomorrow. I gotta go. sorry guys. :relief: