The New TIA
President Bush renamed the much-criticized Total Information Awareness program during the State of the Union address. Now that the TIA was effectively shut down by Senate action, the president said he will create a Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), which is effectively the same function the TIA was designed for: domestic surveillance. This came in close proximity to Bush's bizarre hint that assassination is part of the war on America's enemies.
Expect the Administration to continue to use the TIA to distract the public debate from the TTIC. TIA hasn't been completely killed and can serve as a convenient whipping boy while TTIC grows.
Since its founding, the United States has struggled to prevent domestic surveillance and, with exceptions like the domestic persecution of dissent during World War I and the Hoover years at the FBI, it has done a pretty good job.
Why write about this on a business, technology and investing site? Because the freedom to speak and communicate without fear of persecution is one of the main reasons the U.S. economy has prospered and given rise to so many new ideas.
Posted by Mitch Ratcliffe at January 30, 2003 09:30 AM | TrackBack