Well, the dummies in Washington are at it again. You might recall a few years ago that a certain discredited DoD politician by the name of Poindexter (see Iran-Contra Affair) was found to be at the helm of a project called "Total Information Awareness" (TIA). Once the media caught wind of this program they raised red flags, the citizenry got upset, and Congress investigated. DoD appeared to relent and shut it down. Over the last few years, we've seen it come back in multiple forms. Well, now it's back again, this time hosted by the Department of Homeland (in)Security, and it's called ADVISE -- Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement.
This is, hands-down, one of the most egregious ongoing violations of privacy and common sense that I have seen in government since 9/11. It has been demonstrated over and over and over and over and over again that collecting information on law-abiding citizens DOES NOT solve crimes. Know why? BECAUSE THE ACTIVITIES REVIEWED ARE NOT ILLEGAL!!! Statistically, I would be shocked if even 1% of the data collected could be tied to an actual crime.
Better yet, studies are showing that the movie plot approach to profiling criminals also is not reliable or consistent. If you're targeting 1 person for a specific crime with actual evidence related to that crime, profiling can be useful. However, the reverse is not true. You cannot start with all the "evidence" in the world and deduce from that a crime and then find a criminal. Furthermore, we should all be up in arms that the government would assume that we are acting criminally without justification (could have sworn the Constitution had thoughts on this -- something about innocent until proven guilty, reasonable search and seizure, and so on).
Folks, this is a BAD PROGRAM and it's only going to get worse, unless we rise up and make it stop. Where is this information coming from? Who authorized these companies to provide it to the DHS? Has a crime been committed? Is the right paperwork in place? Is the government really authorized to investigate ALL PEOPLE AS CRIMINALS until they either find an actual crime or conclude we're all innocent? These are not the principles upon which the U.S. Legal System was founded. This is a gross miscarriage of justice, duty, and responsibility. It's wholly unacceptable and inappropriate. And, I would NOT be surprised to find out that it's also illegal. But, then, this hasn't stopped the present administration from committing some of the most heinous violations of human rights and civil liberties that we've seen in more than 50 years (thinking back to Japanese internment camps or slavery).
Leading security thinker Bruce Schneier has blogged about this several times in the past.
The original slashdot entry is here and the actual article in the Washington Times is here.
