Fight the Future

Bills: Down With Citizen Database

Bills, not words, define the latest criticism of the U.S. government's controversial Total Information Awareness program.

Seeking to catch terrorists before they strike, the research program aims to develop data-mining and pattern-matching tools to search databases that track American citizens' purchases, doctor's visits and travel itineraries. It is the signature project of the Information Awareness Office , which operates under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, commonly known as DARPA .

On Tuesday, a broad coalition of public interest groups, ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to the American Conservative Union , urged Congress to scrap the surveillance program.

Just three days earlier, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee asked Attorney General John Ashcroft for detailed information on the project.

Now, lawmakers have introduced three separate bills banning or suspending the program.

The IAO has also revamped their website and gotten rid of that horrendous post-Masonic eye-in-the-pyramid logo. I'd love to see the IAO neutered out of existence. Call me cynical, though, but with the House and Senate the way it is, how likely is it that the bills will pass?