Total Information Awareness -- the all-seeing terrorist spotting algorithm-meets-the-mother-of-all-databases that was ostensibly de-funded by Congress in 2003, never actually died, and was largely rebuilt in secret by the NSA, according to the Wall Street Journal's Siobhan Gorman.
Who among us actually didn't think it had simply been buried deeper, hmm?
The NSA has been working closely with the FBI, using the FBI's authority to get transactional records without court approval using a National Security Letter. The FBI issued some 47,000 of these in 2005, and according to the Justice Department's inspector general and the head of FBI, FBI employees abused this power from 2003-2006 to issue letters they had no authority to issue to gather information on Americans.
But I just know you feel safer. So it’s worth it, right?
Back when I was home brewing, I made a beer label from the TIA (actually, the IAO) logo and gave it to a friend who was having a share of troubles with the alphabet people. Not particularly clever, but the beer was good.
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