Stumbling blocks for big brother: the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program, under sustained attack for the past year, has suffered several recent setbacks.

Score a few points for freedom fighters in the ongoing battle against the total surveillance state. The Defense Department's Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, under sustained attack for the past year, has suffered several recent setbacks. The latest blow came on July 31st with the announcement that TIA's controversial chief, Rear Admiral John Poindexter, would be resigning. Poindexter became the focus of a fiery congressional brouhaha when his bizarre plans to launch a futures market trading in speculation on terror and assassination came to light during the last week of July. A couple of weeks earlier, on July 17th, the U.S. Senate voted to cut off funding for TIA's proposed computer-surveillance project that would have given the federal government wide-ranging capabilities to mine virtually all electronic records and transactions, including private personal records and telephone, fax, and e-mail transmissions.

Strong public opposition to TIA developed early this year as alarm spread over the potential for fedgov invasiveness and massive abuse under many of the program's proposed tasks and features. (See "Watching Your Every Move" in our January 27th issue.) The Bush administration, seeking to calm concerns, changed the name of the program to Terrorism Information Awareness. But it was obvious to many that the label change had done nothing to address fundamental concerns about the Orwellian dangers posed by the program. Despite administration claims that the TIA is essential to combat terrorism, the Senate was unconvinced. A July 14th proposal from the administration sponsored by Senators Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) was rebuffed. It urged the Senate "to remove the provision that prohibits any research and development for the Terrorism Information Awareness program." "This provision," the statement from the Executive Office of the President said, "would deny an important potential tool in the war on terrorism." Disregarding the administration's appeal, the unanimously passed Senate bill stipulated that no funds "may be obligated or expended on research and development on the Terrorism Information Awareness program."

Bizarre Terror Betting Bazaar

One of Poindexter's most dangerous ideas, the futures market in terrorism, was almost at the point of being launched when it ran into a congressional buzzsaw. Registration of traders was to begin August 1st, and actual trading to begin October 1st, with an envisioned 10,000 investors by January 1, 2004.

The project, known as the Policy Analysis Market, reportedly was hatched by Poindexter's team at the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Poindexter had run the program by higher Pentagon officials as well as officials in the intelligence community and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Apparently no one had voiced any objections or concerns.

Traders in the Policy Analysis Market would have bought and sold futures contracts, just as traders now deal in contracts in soy beans, pork bellies, barrels of crude oil, or spot silver. The contracts in this new market, however, would have included speculation on assassinations, coups, and terrorist attacks in the Middle East.

A graphic on the market's web page on July 28th, for instance, showed hypothetical futures contracts on the likelihood that PLO leader Yasser Arafat would be assassinated or Jordanian King Abdullah II would be overthrown. DARPA defended the program, saying it was part of a research effort "to investigate the broadest possible set of new ways to prevent terrorist attacks." DARPA's partners in the project are Net Exchange, a San Diego-based tech company, and the Intelligence Unit of The Economist, Britain's prestigious (and Fabian Socialist) journal of news and commentary.

On July 28th, several days before the market was to begin registering traders, Congress threw up a roadblock. Opposition to the terror trading scheme began as a partisan affair, with attacks by Democratic Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota. Wyden called it "a federal betting parlor on atrocities and terrorism." Dorgan described it as "unbelievably stupid."

Criticism escalated on July 29th, with Senate Democratic Leader Thomas Daschle of South Dakota denouncing the program as "an incentive actually to commit acts of terrorism." "This is just wrong," declared Daschle. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) also weighed in, calling it "a futures market in death."

The criticism went bipartisan as Republicans joined in attacking the program. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) called the proposed market plan "a rather egregious error of judgment." Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said, "This defies common sense. It's absurd."

These developments demonstrate the importance of public input to the political process. In the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks, both houses of Congress have been amenable to virtually every proposal the administration says it needs to fight terrorism, no matter how unconstitutional. Without a sustained public outcry to prompt them, it is unlikely that the Senate would have opposed the TIA program or the DARPA terror marketeers.