The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA, for short) is beginning to contract with technology research and design companies to develop breakthroughs that will “someday” lead to the implementation of what they’re calling aTotal Information Awareness(TIA) system. This system’s purpose would be to monitor communications and detect would-be terrorists and plots before they happen.According to Wired,
TIA program directors make it clear they also believe the task to be beyond current technology, noting that they are primarily interested in revolutionary advances in science, technology or systems and "development of collaboration, automation and cognitive aids technologies that allow humans and machines to think together about complicated and complex problems."
They key word here is revolutionary; this project is not interested in funding "evolutionary" changes in technology, e.g., bit-step improvements to current data mining and storage techniques. Rather, the amount of data that the directors are anticipating (petabytes!) would require massive leaps in technology (and perhaps also some massive leaps in surveillance laws). According to DARPA, such data collection "increases information coverage by an order of magnitude," and ultimately "requires keeping track of individuals and understanding how they fit into models.” The EFF, among others, is concerned for sure. Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney at the EFF had this to say (from Wired):
