InformationWeek > Privacy > "Privacy Appliance" Seeks To Harness Government Snooping > July 14, 2003
Big news item but the research only began in April and is expected to last 3 1/2 years! Interesting note about TIA name change from "Total" to "Terrorism" hmmm!
InformationWeek > Privacy > "Privacy Appliance" Seeks To Harness Government Snooping > July 14, 2003: "A researcher is working on a way for the government's Terrorism Information Awareness system to work without trampling individual rights.
By Matthew Fordahl, AP Technology Writer
PALO ALTO, Calif. (AP) -- The Pentagon's plan to sniff out terrorists from a sea of personal data collected by the government, banks, airlines, credit card companies and other sources has been criticized as the most sweeping invasion of privacy in history.
But Teresa Lunt believes that the much-maligned Terrorism Information Awareness system can work without stomping on individual rights. The researcher has proposed--and the government is funding--the creation of a device that could watch and rein in the watchers.
Civil libertarians aren't so sure about Lunt's so-called privacy appliance, which is being developed at the famed Palo Alto Research Center, now a subsidiary of Xerox Corp., under a $3.5 million, 3-1/2-year contract awarded in April. Critics question whether it will work, and if it does, whether clever snoops can bypass it.
'One of my civil liberties nightmares is that you have a system that sounds very good with a privacy appliance, but it's got some sort of a breaker switch that in an emergency is shut off,' said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Lunt's appliance is being developed under Project Genisys, one branch of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's wide-ranging TIA program.
The appliance would be controlled by whomever owns the data, Lunt says. With the owner's permission, government analysts would submit queries to the appliances, which would filter out identif"
InformationWeek > Privacy > "Privacy Appliance" Seeks To Harness Government Snooping > July 14, 2003: "A researcher is working on a way for the government's Terrorism Information Awareness system to work without trampling individual rights.
By Matthew Fordahl, AP Technology Writer
PALO ALTO, Calif. (AP) -- The Pentagon's plan to sniff out terrorists from a sea of personal data collected by the government, banks, airlines, credit card companies and other sources has been criticized as the most sweeping invasion of privacy in history.
But Teresa Lunt believes that the much-maligned Terrorism Information Awareness system can work without stomping on individual rights. The researcher has proposed--and the government is funding--the creation of a device that could watch and rein in the watchers.
Civil libertarians aren't so sure about Lunt's so-called privacy appliance, which is being developed at the famed Palo Alto Research Center, now a subsidiary of Xerox Corp., under a $3.5 million, 3-1/2-year contract awarded in April. Critics question whether it will work, and if it does, whether clever snoops can bypass it.
'One of my civil liberties nightmares is that you have a system that sounds very good with a privacy appliance, but it's got some sort of a breaker switch that in an emergency is shut off,' said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Lunt's appliance is being developed under Project Genisys, one branch of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's wide-ranging TIA program.
The appliance would be controlled by whomever owns the data, Lunt says. With the owner's permission, government analysts would submit queries to the appliances, which would filter out identif"