By Sandra Tragesser
UHCLIDIAN STAFF

President Bush signed the Homeland Security Act Nov. 25. Hidden within the legislation is language that allows the government to collect public and private electronic transactions of all Americans into a centralized database.

The goal of the Total Information Awareness program, run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is to design an integrated computer system that would monitor financial transactions, medical records, credit card purchases and other personal information to thwart would-be terrorists.

"Total Information Awareness is an experimental prototype that will attempt to search vast quantities of data to determine links and patterns indicative of terrorist activities," said Edward Aldridge, under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. "If TIA proves useful, it will then be turned over to the intelligence, counterintelligence and law enforcement communities as a tool to help them in their battle against domestic terrorism."

Critics have charged that the program will give the Defense Department the power to invade personal privacy.

"This is an example of the trade off between increased security and civil liberties," said Richard Stoll, professor of political science and associate dean of social sciences at Rice University. "Of course we want the government to anticipate terrorist attacks and prevent them. But, I don't think most people will be comfortable with the government routinely collecting vast amounts of information on them, even if for the most part, this information will simply be stored until needed."

"I think it is very important that we carefully balance homeland security against individual and constitutional liberties," said Richard Alderman, director of the Consumer Law Center at the University of Houston Law Center.

The program will fund research and development of technologies that will allow the government to track e-mail, Internet use, travel, credit card purchases, automatic teller withdrawals, telephone, banking and academic records and other personal information that will be combined into a super database.

"There has obviously been a growing problem within the private sector over collection of information for targeted marketing," said David Sobel, general counsel at Electronic Privacy Information Center. "What's different now is the government is putting major resources into getting access to privately collected data. This could mean the difference between worrying about getting junk mail and worrying about getting caught in some sort of government investigation if a pattern of activity meets some profile of suspicious behavior."

"I think all of us are concerned about the possibility of 'snooping' into our private lives and fear 'Big Brother' is watching us," said Roger Durand, professor of public affairs at UH-Clear Lake. "The information out there about all of us is already amazing, and in the wrong hands could do all of us a lot of harm. Further, there is no database that will be immune to security breaches. Consider that over the last several years what should be the safest computer systems in the world, the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA, probably have been illegally entered several thousand times."

The TIA program is one of many projects now under way by the government to combine commercial and government data in order to search for patterns of terrorist activities.

"Now that Americans are experiencing the effects of international terrorism, they understandably demand protection," said Jeraine Root, who will be teaching a class called Terrorism and Democracy in the spring at UH-Clear Lake. "But at what cost? If the TIA database was already operational, I wonder if my recent purchase of several videos and books related to terrorism in order to do research for the class I'll be teaching next semester might make me a prime suspect? I don't see how it would be possible to accomplish the goals of TIA without encroaching on our rights."

The TIA program has three parts designed to assist anti-terrorism efforts.

"The first part would create technology that will allow for rapid language translation," Aldridge said.

"A second component will be used to identify connections among various transactions. For example, the system will try to find any terrorist links between people issued passports, visas or work permits and the purchase of weapons or explosive materials.

"Lastly, the program will seek to determine what kind of tools would permit the analysts to work together in an interagency community."

The Homeland Security Act establishes the Total Information Awareness program within a new agency-the Homeland Security Advance Research Projects Agency, which will be modeled after DARPA, the central research office for the Defense Department and the agency that initiated the creation of the Internet.

HSARPA and DARPA will both be under the supervision of John Poindexter, director of the Information Awareness Office.

Poindexter was national security adviser for President Reagan during the Iran-Contra scandal. In 1990, he was convicted of five felonies including lying to Congress and destroying evidence.

A federal appeals court reversed Poindexter's conviction because he had been granted immunity for testifying before Congress.

"The database is not yet functional and will not be available for several years," Aldridge said. "When it's ready, individual privacy rights will be protected. I don't know what the scope of this [TIA] is going to be. We are in a war on terrorism. We are trying to find out if this technology can work."

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