Total Information Awareness
The Total Information Awareness program was created by the United States Government in January of 2003 as a part of the Homeland Security Act. It was created to collect data from both public and private servers to detect any potential national security threats. It was also commonly referred to as Terrorism Information Awareness.
In September of 2003, the same year that the program began, Congress officials voted to terminate the program and cease its funding. This stopped it for a while, but it was reported that the software used for the program shifted to the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2006.
The issues that arise from this program is the amount of power that it gives the United States Government. While there are clear benefits in finding potential terrorist threats, there really are no boundaries on who they can spy on. This means that everyday citizens were, and still are, being spied on by the government.
This program gave the government access to some very private information that many may not realize. Things like bank deposits, credit card purchases, passport information, web browsing history, license registrations, etc., are now able to be seen by the U.S. government.
This poses some very serious privacy issues. Should the government be allowed to access our personal information like this? Absolutely not, but to think that we could stop them would be very naive. While there are some clear benefits to this program, the negatives clearly outweigh the positives.
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