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              | Date: 2003-06-21 
 
 ACLU: TIA/Poindexter - get lostDas unlängst in "Terroristen Information Awareness" umbenannte Programm gehöre sofort beendet, fordern neben der ACLU politisch völlig verschieden einzuordnende Abgeordnete, Think Tanks, Lobbies und Bürgerrechtsgruppen.-.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.-
 
 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
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