The Short Life, Public Execution and Resurrection of John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness

Was it an Orwellian nightmare or an intelligence savior? John Poindexter says TIA was sucked into a vortex of politics and knee-jerk foolishness before anyone could answer that question.

"DARPA was not ever going to implement TIA," says Poindexter. "I mean, DARPA is not an operational agency, it's [intended for] R&D. Again, we were starting an R&D program. We wanted to be as expansive as possible to make sure we didn't preclude some good ideas."

Although Poindexter was often cast by the media as some sort of evil genius bent on invading citizens' privacy, he regards that as inaccurate and unfair. For the record, here's what he says would be out-of-bounds in a TIA-like project: "Uncontrolled access to data, with no audit trail of activity and no [outside] oversight would be going too far. This applies to both commercial and government use of data about people." To be acceptable, he insists, TIA would have required the "privacy appliance" proposed by PARC. (Poindexter saw a potential solution to the problem of identity theft as an ancillary benefit of the PARC concept.)

But what about abuse of the TIA system? What would stop the government from using it against common crimes rather than for counterterrorism? What would stop insiders from improperly using the data?

Nothing, says Poindexter. That's a legitimate concern.

"I don't think it's a technology issue. It's a policy issue," he concludes. And this is exactly what he had hoped to address from the beginning of the IAO processthe focus on policy, the transparency of the process. Showing rare emotion, he admits to being flustered by the inability of politicians and the media to accept that he thought seriously about these issues, and they were in fact being addressed. It's the job of "Congress and the judicial branch and the executive branch, after appropriate debate, [to] establish whatever policies are appropriate," he says.

But to simply put a halt to promising technology out of fear that policy will fail to control its use? "It's like saying that we shouldn't develop M16 rifles because they may be used by criminals." He shakes his head incredulously.SuccessesAfter an initial furor, during which Poindexter battled these misconceptions, the outrage dissipated. The IAO even managed some successful trials while dealing with public falloutincluding the creation of "Vanilla World," a virtual world not unlike the popular Electronic Arts Sims computer games. Vanilla World's 2 million virtual citizens eventually incorporated potential terrorists making suspicious transactions. Other programs made progress too, and were eventually wrapped into TIA to be tested in an operational setting. (Poindexter is careful to note that they all remained experimental; none ever replaced operational systems.)