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                Date: 2003-06-21
                 
                 
                ACLU: TIA/Poindexter - get lost
                Das unlängst in "Terroristen Information Awareness" umbenannte Programm gehöre sofort beendet, fordern neben der ACLU politisch völlig verschieden einzuordnende Abgeordnete, Think Tanks, Lobbies und Bürgerrechtsgruppen.   
                 
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                The American Civil Liberties Union today told a committee of  
outside advisors on the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness surveillance  
system that the program should be shut down and said that recent  
alterations of the spy program's public profile, such as changing its name  
to "Terrorism Information Awareness," are little more than cosmetic. 
"The Pentagon's recent push to tone down the Orwellian overtones of this  
highly troubling program is nothing but spin," said Jay Stanley,  
Communications Director for the ACLU Technology and Liberty Project, who  
testified today.  "Don't be fooled - this program would dramatically  
undercut our privacy and civil liberties.  We are confident that the  
members of this committee will reach the same conclusion." 
Advocates ranging in political persuasion from the Eagle Forum and the  
American Conservative Union to the ACLU have roundly criticized the system,  
which is intended to allow federal agencies to divine terrorism before it  
happens by mining the electronic records of Americans' credit card  
purchases, medical, educational and financial transactions, travel  
itineraries and other daily behavior. 
The advisory board in question was created by the Pentagon earlier this  
year in response to growing concern among advocacy groups and the general  
public that the Total Information Awareness system would sweep in innocent  
Americans while failing to catch actual terrorists. 
Late last month, in order to comply with oversight legislation passed by  
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), the Pentagon released a report detailing the privacy  
and civil liberties threats posed by the much-maligned system.  In its own  
report, released several days before the Wyden amendment's deadline, the  
ACLU spelled out the plethora of ongoing concerns about the program that  
must be addressed by the Department of Defense before Congress can make an  
informed decision about whether to let the system go forward.  Stanley  
reiterated these today, asking: 
*How can Americans remain free when their every transaction is subject to  
government scrutiny? 
*How the system will be effective in the face of what, by most accounts,  
will be a crippling false-positive rate? 
*How the bedrock American principle of "individualized suspicion" will be  
maintained in the face of a system designed to guess about who might be a  
suspect? 
*How the TIA's mission might grow given the tendency for such programs to  
expand once they are established? 
The ACLU's testimony can be found at: 
http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=12945&c=206
                   
                
                 
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edited by Harkank  
published on: 2003-06-21 
comments to office@quintessenz.at
                   
                  
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