Friday, September 26, 2003
Congress refuses to fund TIA
Privacy and civil-rights groups have hailed Congress' decision to effectively kill a controversial Pentagon program to construct a powerful computerized surveillance system that critics feared would lead to unprecedented spying into the private lives of U.S. citizens.
The program, whose name was changed from "Total Information Awareness" to "Terrorist Information Awareness after an initial outcry late last year, was the brainchild of ret. Admiral John Poindexter, former President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser who was convicted of five felony counts of lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair in the mid-1980s.
In a bid to save the program, Poindexter resigned his position in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) last month, but a conference committee of House and Senate members agreed to delete funding for TIA when it met earlier this week to finish reconciling the two houses' versions of the 2004 defense appropriations bill. The conference committee said it was "concerned about the activities of the Information Awareness Office (that had been headed by Poindexter) and directed that the office be terminated immediately." The final bill also banned the government from using the technology envisioned by TIA in any other program.
The House of Representatives voted 407-15 to approve the conference committee's bill on Wednesday, while the House approved it Thursday by a vote of 95-0.
Fantastic.
posted by chris at 5:23 PM
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