Total Information Awareness

Total Information Awareness is the name of a massive U.S. data mining project focused on scanning travel, financial and other data from public and private sources with the goal of detecting and preventing transnational threats to national security. This can also be called the Terrorist Information awareness act, which is part of the Homeland Security Act.

This is an image of the logo the Total Information Awareness Office that was in charge of this act and all of its software and data collection.

This program was created to collect information that could help the government prevent further attacks on the US. It was unmasked in 2002 and terminated in 2003, because of public backlash. When this occurred all of the software was transferred to the hands of the NSA where it is now used for counter terrorism measures.

Now there are both good and bad impacts surrounding this act. There is a way in which this could potentially invade the privacy of the American people, but isn't that worth keeping the country safe from terrorist attacks? The idea of this software is to have the incite to know where extremists are in our country and be able to know what they're doing in order to stop them.

To me this sounds like solely a positive impact. I don't think there should be a reason to fear the government knowing your information, unless you have something to hide. If you are a law abiding citizen, there should be no reason to worry about conversations with your family about dinner, or best friend about the boy you met the night before.

While there are some questionable aspects of this act. Overall, it shows how our government cares for the safety and well being of the American people.