The Total Information Awareness Program is the definition of what the government is doing now in terms of trying to find and stealing people's information online.
It was created in November of 2002, by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which is a branch of the Department of Defense that works with military research. It was headed by the former National Security Advisor and head of the Department of Defense, John Poindexter. The program was intended to detect terrorists through analyzing tons and tons of information. The program in reality though was stealing tons of peoples information all around the world, and they were being placed in a "ultra-large-scale database", which was made available to government officials. As you can imagine, when this program was brought to light in the United States, citizens were furious. There were tons of reports calling for this program to be shut down. And to no ones surprise, the whole program was shut down after just ten months on September 30th, 2003.
The thing is though about the TIA, was that it was never actually discontinued.
Since the program was a government program, there were new programs made which simply provided another form of surveillance. One similar program that was made was called CAPS II. CAPS II would collect mass amounts of information about millions of Americans who would fly that year, and would create profiles about them. It is based on the same false assumptions that terrorism can be prevented by gathering massive amounts of data about everyone and then subjecting them to a virtual pursuit, which is why it has much more surface appeal when used in the context of airlines and has been presented in a much less threatening way.
In the last decade, the United States has seen a ginormous explosion in the amount of tracking and information of U.S. citizens, which really can be narrowed down to two deciding factors. The first one being technology. Modern technology has aided us in many revolutions by making our lives simpler, faster, and overall better. Smartwatches and smartphones are examples of multipurpose devices made possible by modern technology. Computers are now more powerful, portable, and faster than ever before. We have electric powered cars, along with even flying cars in some portions of the world. But with all this expanding technology comes other kinds that have made it a lot easier to track, store, and analyze information about us humans. Another reason is the amount of commercialization of data that has happened in recent years. Corporations have figured out that private information about customers are very valuable, and are trying to process how to make as much revenue as possible from this. This is why whenever customers want to buy something for example in a store, whenever they are checking out, they get the option to sign up for a certain loyalty card, or something along those lines. If those customers do in fact sign up, they get discounts or points to spend on other things, although the company is getting something much bigger than just that. They are getting tons of information about who you are and what you are like.
It's scary stuff what companies are doing nowadays with trying to figure out people's personal information just for more revenue. It overall has killed privacy in America, with basically every aspect of our lives being written down and catalogued for government officials. These government officials are ultimately going to abuse this power that they have against us, and us as citizens have nothing to do about it, apart from doing these simple things. Clear your search history, don't give any sketchy websites any personal information, and keep your passwords and other valuable information to yourself.
No comments:
Post a Comment