Information Awareness Office

The Information Awareness Office is a branch of the United States Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency whose mission is to "imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate and transition information technologies, components and prototype, closed-loop, information systems that will counter asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness". The IAO's mission was originally Total Information Awareness; this was amended in May of 2003 to Terrorist Information Awareness (TIA). The IAO is headed by John Poindexter, former National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan and chief architect of the Iran-Contra Affair.

The IAO, and its stated mission, are a gift to conspiracy theorists and paranoiacs everywhere, particularly with its use of the Masonic eye-in-pyramid symbol in their logo. The IAO's Illuminati-esque logo features the all-seeing eye of God from the Great Seal of the United States replaced with the all-seeing eye of the Information Awareness Office gazing at the Earth, and the Latin motto "scientia est potentia," meaning "knowledge is power".

On approximately December 19, 2002, the pyramid logo was removed without comment from the official IAO webpage, presumably in response to widespread criticism of its Masonic/Illuminati overtones. The biographies of senior staffers also disappeared. A mirror of the old page may be found here (http://www.thememoryhole.org/policestate/iao-logo.htm).

The IAO's stated mission is to gather as much information as possible about everyone in a centralized location for easy perusal by the United States government, including Internet activity, credit card purchase histories, airline ticket purchases, car rentals, medical records, educational transcripts, driver's licenses, utility bills, tax returns, and any other available data. In essence, the goal of the IAO is to be able to recreate a life history of thoughts and movements for any individual on the planet on demand, which the Bush administration deems necessary to counter the threat of terrorism. Critics claim the very existence of the IAO completely disregards the concept of individual privacy and liberties and is far too invasive and prone to abuse.

The IAO was first mentioned in the media by New York Times reporter John Markoff on February 13, 2002, with few details available as to the agency's role or activities. In the following months, as more and more information emerged about the IAO's full scope, protest among civil libertarians grew over what they claim is the IAO's disturbingly Orwellian mission, especially within the larger framework of other invasive homeland security measures and policies implemented by the Bush administration. Also at issue is the integrity of Poindexter as head of the IAO, as he was convicted on five felony charges for lying to Congress and deliberately altering and destroying documents pertaining to the Iran-Contra Affair.

On January 16, 2003, US Senator Russ Feingold[?] introduced legislation to halt activity of the IAO and the Total Information Awareness initiative pending a Congressional review of privacy issues involved. A similar measure introduced by Senator Ron Wyden would bar the IAO from operating within the United States unless specifically authorized to do so by Congress, and would shut the IAO down entirely 60 days after passage, unless either the Pentagon prepared a report assessing the impact of IAO activities on individual privacy and civil liberties, or the President ceritifies that the program's research is vital to national security interests.

Congress passed legislation in February of 2003 halting activities of the IAO, pending a Congressional report of the office's activities. Any action in the US Congress to attempt to halt a specific internal Department of Defense project is highly unusual, underscoring the grave threat to civil liberties and privacy that many lawmakers perceive in the Information Awareness Office.

DARPA changed the name of the "Total Information Awareness" program to "Terrorist Information Awareness" on May 20, 2003, emphasizing in its report to Congress that the program is not designed to compile dossiers on US citizens, but rather to gather information on terrorist networks. Despite this name change and reassurance, the description of the program's activities remained essentially the same in the report, and critics maintain that the system is still prone to massive Orwellian abuses.

Public Protests against the Information Awareness Office

There has been extensive criticism of the IAO in the media and on the Internet from both left wing and right wing civil libertarians who feel that the unprecendented systematic categorization and access to information that it will enable is a grave threat to individual liberties, and another step farther down the slippery slope to a totalitarian state.

On November 27, 2002, San Francisco Weekly[?] columnist Matt Smith decided to illustrate the perils of information proliferation to John Poindexter personally by publishing a column containing Poindexter's home address and phone number, along with those of his next door neighbors. The information quickly propagated through the Internet, and protestors created numerous web sites (http://www.warblogging.com/tia/poindexter.php) with this data, and with satellite photographs of Poindexter's house.

IAO Research

As part of the IAO's "Total Information Awareness" program, several new technologies are being researched.

Effective Affordable Reusable Speech-to-text, or EARS, has a stated goal of "developing speech-to-text[?] (automatic transcription) technology whose output is substantially richer and much more accurate than currently possible." This program is focusing on broadcast and telephone human conversations in multiple languages, necessary for the computerized analysis of the massive amount of phone tapping[?] the IAO now has the right to perform without a legal warrant.

Futures Markets Applied to Prediction, or FutureMAP, intends to "concentrate on market-based techniques for avoiding surprise and predicting future events." It will analyze data from the world's economy in attempt to predict political instability, threats to national security, and in general every major event in the near future. The IAO's stated strategy for this division includes "the markets must also be sufficiently robust to withstand manipulation", possibly suggesting the intention of altering future events to further the goals of the United States.

Genisys is the name given to the database system which will be implented as the center of information for the IAO. Currently used database systems designed in the 1980s are insufficient for the massive amount of data to be gathered.

Genoa "provides the structured argumentation, decision-making and corporate memory to rapidly deal with and adjust to dynamic crisis management." In essence, this program is designed to make conclusions and decisions based on available information, incorporating human analysis, corporate history, and a structured set of thinking. This research project was finished in fiscal year 2002, and is being followed up by Genoa II, which effectively automates the collaboration between government departments.

Human Identification at a Distance, or HumanID, "is to develop automated biometric identification technologies to detect, recognize and identify humans at great distances." This program intends to be able to implement a face and gait identification system effective up to 150 meters at all times by fiscal year 2004. One such program, developed by Georgia Tech at a cost of nearly $1 million, identifies distinctive patterns in human walks via radar. [1] (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-2694090,00)

Translingual Information Detection, Extraction and Summarization, or TIDES, is being developed to detect, translate, summarize, and extract information in speech or text in multiple languages. Demonstration of machine capabilities and integration into Total Information Awareness systems is expected in 2003.

Wargaming the Asymmetric Environment, or WAE, is intended to develop automated technology capable of predicting terrorist attacks, identifying predictive indicators by examining individual and group behavior in broad environmental context. The WAE will also develop intervention strategies based on the motivation of specific terrorists.

Literature and Movies Critical of Total Information Awareness

• The Transparent Society by David Brin
• Nineteen Eighty-Four, a novel by George Orwell depicting a total information awareness society
• Minority Report, a story by Philip K. Dick about a society that arrests people for crimes they have yet to commit (made into a movie in 2002)
• Brazil, a movie by Terry Gilliam depicting an oppressive total information awareness society

See Also

• LifeLog, "an ontology-based (sub)system that captures, stores, and makes accessible the flow of one person's experience in and interactions with the world in order to support a broad spectrum of associates/assistants and other system capabilities. The objective of this "LifeLog" concept is to be able to trace the "threads" of an individual's life in terms of events, states, and relationships."

External Links

• The Information Awareness Office's official homepage (http://www.darpa.mil/iao/)
• Speech by John Poindexter providing an overview of the Information Awareness Office (http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/poindexter)
• Critical appraisal of the IAO by the Cato Institute (http://www.cato.org/research/articles/pena-021122)
• Articles about TIA/IAO From Warblogging.com (http://www.warblogging.com/tia/)
• Information about the disapperance of the IAO logo (http://www.thememoryhole.org/policestate/iao-logo.htm)
• Outsourcing Big Brother (http://www.public-i.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=484), a report by the Center for Public Integrity, reports that the Information Awareness Office "has hired at least eight private companies to work on the effort."
• Pentagon database plan hits snag on Hill (http://news.com.com/2100-1023-980889), by Declan McCullagh, c|net news
• Pentagon Snoopers (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/25/opinion/25SAT1?ex=1044075600&en=c1900b1457525e40&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLECurbing) The New York Times editorial, January 25, 2003.
• Unfocused Data-Mining (http://www.sptimes.com/2003/01/24/Opinion/Unfocused_data_mining.shtml) The St. Petersburg Times, January 24, 2003.
• Pentagon Defends Surveillance Program (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15395-2003May20?nav=hptoc_tn) The Washington Post, May 20, 2003
• The Pentagon's PR Play (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19272-2003May21?nav=hptoc_tn) The Washington Post, May 21, 2003.