Jeremy Norman’sHistoryofInformation.com Exploring the History of Information and Media through Timelines
Jeremy Norman’s
Diagram of the Total Information Awareness system from the (decommissioned) Information Awareness Office website.
The Terrorism Information Awareness program, formerly known as "Total Information Awareness" was terminated on September 24, 2003.
A: Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Seal of the short-lived "Information Awareness Office.," which not so subtly suggests that the government is spying on the world. The motto in Latin, in which the traditional Latin word order was modified from "scientia potentia est" to "scientia est potentia," consists of the famous phrase translated as "knowledge is power."
In January 2002 the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency established the euphemistically named Information Awareness Office to to apply surveillance and information technology to track and monitor terrorists and other "asymmetric" threats to U.S. national security by achieving what they called "Total Information Awareness" (TIA).
The IAO office attempted to achieve TIA "by creating enormous computer databases to gather and store the personal information of everyone in the United States, including personal e-mails, social networks, credit card records, phone calls, medical records, and numerous other sources, without any requirement for a search warrant.[7] This information was then analyzed to look for suspicious activities, connections between individuals, and "threats".[8] Additionally, the program included funding for biometric surveillance technologies that could identify and track individuals using surveillance cameras, and other methods.
One year after the Information Awareness Office was created the IAO was defunded by Congress following public criticism that this technology could lead to a mass surveillance system. "However, several IAO projects continued to be funded and merely run under different names, as revealed by Edward Snowden during the course of the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures.[5][6][9][10][11][12] (Wikipedia article on Information Awareness Office, accessed 9-2020)
