Wyden, Dorgan Continue Call for Closure of
“Terrorism Information Awareness” Program
Privacy, civil liberties concerns persist
after Poindexter resignation
July 31, 2003
Washington, DC – U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Byron
Dorgan (D-N.D.) issued a brief statement today following the resignation
of Dr. John Poindexter, director of the Terrorism (formerly Total)
Information Awareness (TIA) Program at the Department of Defense.
On Monday, Wyden and Dorgan drew attention to a proposed program
under Dr. Poindexter’s authority that would have sold futures
contracts on assassinations, coups and military strikes in an attempt
to predict terrorist events. The program, FutureMAP, was shut down
by the Defense Department’s Defense Advance Research Projects
Agency (DARPA) the next day. Wyden and Dorgan have said that they
favor the shutdown of the entire TIA program, of which FutureMAP
was one component. Their statement reads as follows:
“As Congress contemplates the future of the Terrorism Information
Awareness Program after the resignation of Dr. Poindexter, we want
to make one point clear: even with today’s announcement, the
proposed TIA program would still be the biggest spying and surveillance
overreach in America’s history, and it should be shut down.
Congress will have the opportunity to do just that in the conference
for the defense appropriations bill in the fall and we hope to see
this program de-funded once and for all. We have always believed
that it is possible to fight terrorism vigorously without gutting
civil liberties. The TIA program skews that balance and needs to
go.”
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