It's true there are significant dangers to Total Information Awareness, and the computer scientists all said they were worried about that. The whole thing may be unconstitutional; if it's not, it would still be what many people consider an invasion of privacy, and there would need to be new rules governing its use. Can such rules be set up -- and will they? And do we trust the people setting them up? But despite these questions, the computer scientists also said they think of TIA as a long-term research project. As such, they say, both the policy that will govern it and the technology that will run inside it need to be publicly debated.

Up to this point, the Defense Department has been circumspect about TIA and what rules will govern it. At a briefing in late November, Edward Aldridge, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, logistics and technology, told reporters that in the experimental phase of TIA, the system would use phony data. He also said that "in order to preserve the sanctity of individual privacy, we're designing this system to ensure complete anonymity of uninvolved citizens, thus focusing the efforts of law enforcement officials on terrorist investigations. The information gathered would then be subject to the same [legal protections] currently in place for the other law enforcement activities." But he didn't say what those rules were.

A reporter asked: "It sounds like every time I would enter or a citizen would enter a credit card, any banking transaction, any medical -- I go see my doctor, any prescription -- all of those things become part of this database. Right? Hypothetically?"

"Hypothetically they would," Aldridge said. "Although the data that would go along with personal information such as bank accounts, that would all be protected in the Privacy Act just as it is today. Individuals would not be associated with that."

Aldridge was then asked if the department would need search warrants to add personal data to its files. He sidestepped the question: "First of all, we are developing the technology of a system that could be used by the law enforcement officials, if they choose to do so. It is a technology that we're developing. We are not using this for this purpose. It is technology." He was asked again about search warrants. "They would have to go through whatever legal proceedings they would go through today to protect the individuals' rights, yes," Aldridge said. (A few experts have said that a system like TIA that would require search warrants would be unworkable.)

It's this sort of secrecy that gives Ullman, of Stanford, the willies. He's for a system like TIA, but he deeply mistrusts the people in power. "For it to work," he says, "you'd have to get Republicans agreeing to not use it to track drug dealers and other civil crimes that are not acts of war. Whether a Republican administration would ever contemplate this, I don't know. Because Ashcroft wants to catch drug dealers."

But Ullman also adds that "once you get the right laws passed, the thing that makes it a crime to misuse the data there, then you're OK. Why doesn't the military stage a coup? Because there's a tradition built up over 200 years that doesn't let this thing happen. You have to get that here, that tradition."

In the end, the debate over TIA, if it comes, may hang on this point: Are the rules good enough? For some people, no number of safeguards may be OK. Lee Tien, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, for example, says that "I can't possibly say yes based on what I know now. I'd have to be convinced there would be a commitment to privacy from the get-go, and we just don't see that now. This administration is known for its secrecy. They are as bad as Nixon, maybe worse. We certainly cannot trust them with this system."

He added that "one of my biggest fears is that they are working on this stuff and they have some breakthroughs, and then something happens -- an attack -- and all of a sudden TIA's riding the white horse to the rescue. And then it's, 'Gee we haven't worked out the privacy,' and 'We haven't had new legal protections, but the exigencies are such that we need it now.'"

That's probably a valid fear. But so is the fear of terrorism, says Ramakrishnan. "You know, not to make its sound grandiose, but I think there is a battle here, and we're facing the kinds of things the people who invented the atom bomb were thinking. It's probably not whether we should -- I don't think we have a choice. I would rather that we understood this and took the time to enforce reasonable safeguards. To the extent that we do this in the open and have in place an array of legal legislative guidelines, I'd be much happier with that."

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