I'm sure most everyone here is familiar with the Total Information Awareness program originally proposed by Adm. John Poindexter, partially implemented by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Information Awareness Office and allegedly terminated after it came to light in 2003. I'm also sure most here know that various parts of the program weren't really terminated, only moved to assorted black programs in other agencies.
But what you may not have known is that the whole thing was outsourced to Singapore and they have now rolled out an even bigger badder program than the original TIA.
And who might the guest of honor be at the rollout? Why Adm. John Poindexter, of course:
Nearly four years after Congress pulled the plug on what critics assailed as an Orwellian scheme to spy on private citizens, Singapore is set to launch an even more ambitious incarnation of the Pentagon's controversial Total Information Awareness program -- an effort to collect and mine data across all government agencies in the hopes of pinpointing threats to national security.
The Singapore prototype of the system -- dubbed Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning, or RAHS -- was rolled out early this week at a conference in the Southeast Asia city-state. Retired U.S. Adm. John Poindexter, the architect of the original Pentagon program, traveled to Singapore to deliver a speech at the unveiling, while backers have already begun quietly touting the system to U.S. intelligence officials.
(emphasis mine)
Singapore is a natual partner in such a venture - they're pretty much the embodiment of the Bush administration's ideal - a veneer of democracy covering a profound authoritarianism. And while this goes by the name RAHS, this really is Son of TIA:
While different in design from TIA, the RAHS system shares some intellectual roots with the doomed Darpa effort. The two principal consultants for RAHS are John Peterson, of the Virginia-based Arlington Institute, and Dave Snowden, who was previously supported by Poindexter's office within Darpa, and is now the chief scientific officer of Cognitive Edge, a Singapore-based company.
And now that they've built it, the push is on to market it back to our very own little authoritarians in Homeland Security:
That's where the conference in Singapore comes in. The goal of the symposium, which took place Monday and Tuesday, was "to expose this thing to the international world," said the Arlington Institute's Peterson. Officials from the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States, New Zealand and Israel were invited to attend.
The conference follows a visit to Washington, D.C., the first week in March by a Singapore delegation to discuss RAHS with U.S. intelligence and Homeland Security officials. The Singaporeans had on their agenda meetings with Charles Allen, DHS' assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis, and Patrick Neary, strategy chief for National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, according to the PR firm hired by the Singapore government to publicize the trip, though the planned meeting with Neary didn't take place. Neither DHS nor the Office of the Director of National Intelligence would comment on their interest in the program.
But don't worry ... this would never be used to invade your privacy. It's only meant to protect you from terror ...