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Concept
Information Awareness Office
Summary
The Information Awareness Office (IAO) was established by the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in January 2002 to bring together several DARPA projects focused on applying surveillance and information technology to track and monitor terrorists and other asymmetric threats to U.S. national security by achieving "Total Information Awareness" (TIA).
It was achieved 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. The information was then analyzed for suspicious activities, connections between individuals, and "threats". The program also included funding for biometric surveillance technologies that could identify and track individuals using surveillance cameras and other methods.
Following public criticism that the technology's development and deployment could lead to a mass surveillance system, the IAO was defunded by Congress in 2003. However, several IAO projects continued to be funded under different names, as revealed by Edward Snowden during the course of the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures.
The IAO was established after Admiral John Poindexter, former United States National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan, and SAIC executive Brian Hicks approached the US Department of Defense with the idea for an information awareness program after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Poindexter and Hicks had previously worked together on intelligence-technology programs for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA agreed to host the program and appointed Poindexter to run it in 2002.
The IAO began funding research and development of the Total Information Awareness (TIA) Program in February 2003 but renamed the program the Terrorism Information Awareness Program in May that year after an adverse media reaction to the program's implications for public surveillance.
Official source
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