So to my surprise, it turns out tracking people online did not begin with the evil Facebook huh?
Around the 90s people owning their own computers started to become a norm among society. Granted, they would more often than not be the big bulky ones that take forever to load a single website. But still, people owning computers and being able to go on the internet started to become more of a stay in society. With more people going on the internet, the more online crime could technically be a thing. Where hacking into bank accounts and private documents restricted to the general public became an actual possibility. This got the attention of the government, as their IT departments started to brainstorm ways to surveil people as they go online and ensure no one commits any crimes while online.
The problem with all of this was few Americans would stand to have their private information be seen by strangers regardless of their credentials as it would take away their privacy from the. Add to it the government never had an actual reason or high ground to create a system to watch what people do online. That was until the attack on the Twin Towers happened on September 11th. From there the systems of government were concerned about what could potentially happen to put it lightly. They have discovered that if people could hack create terrorism that can knock two of the tallest buildings in the country down to the ground, what could happen in a year. Or five? Or ten? As technology started to evolve at a much rapider pace, the United States government created something. Thus, in only a few short month at the beginning of 2002, the United States Government established the Information Awareness office. Their goal was to apply surveillance and information technology to track and monitor terrorists and other "asymmetric" threats to U.S. national security.
They created a workplace called the Information Awareness Office or IAO for short. They would start to create large computer data bases to record everyone's online history. This would include e-mails, phone calls, credit card histories, medical records, and just about anything else they could get their hands on. All without any warrant or even warning. They would analyze all of this information so they could look for threats and potential terrorists. The Program became the closest thing the United States ever had to a "big brother" program, as it made as much information available as possible, as it put as many people as it could find into this "ultra large scale" data base, trying to find the terrorists
The program's next step was to start to fund for biometric surveillance technologies, that allow city products such as traffic cams to run facial recognition on people and try to find threats and terrorists. However the more this program was starting to be developed and evolve the more concerned the general public was about their privacy and freedom. This would start to cause outrage in the general public that ultimately led to Congress deciding that this mass surveillance system was not right and it was shut down in 2003. Since people realized that this program would absolutely kill privacy. Congress eliminated funding for the project and closed the Pentagon's Information Awareness Office.
Or so we thought.
While yes, TIA is no longer taking function, there is still plenty of data mining being done by the government. They still have instead plenty of the initiative that spawned from TIA such as the Novel Intelligence from Massive Data, that came from the the Intelligence Community Advanced Research and Development Activity. Other departments within the government have also began data mining projects around the time such as the FBI. A new system called "Thin Thread" was made to take place afterwards.
Even now, with the existence of social media that plays a prevalent role in the lives of many young Americans, this is the breeding ground for surveillance. Where even some companies such as Facebook would partner to surveil people without their knowledge. Thanks a lot Mark Zuckerberg.
But now with all these new secrets the government is holding from us comes people disinclined to be apart of it, feeling it is inhumane. With that came the whistleblowers and people trying to expose all of these agencies for what they are. Unfortunately those whole blow the whistle would not be happy with what would come after. Many would of course, be fired but many more would face legal consequence and some even ended up in jail. One man who did, William Binney, says that he blew the whistle to a Justice on the Supreme Court, to the House intelligence committees that are supposedly tasked with oversight of the 16 secretive intelligence agencies, and to the DOJ's Inspector General. What happened afterwards you might wonder? He was the one investigated, and the FBI busted into his house, guns drawn. All while no one payed any attention to what he risked his entire lifestyle for. Isn't that lovely. According to Binney "I'm sure there are. And I know a number of them that are but they're so, they're so afraid to do anything. I mean, they've seen what happened to us — they sent the FBI to us. So they're afraid of being indicted, prosecuted, and even if you win the case if you're indicted, you're still going to lose, because you've had to hire a lawyer and all like Tom [Drake] did and we did. So you lose anyway you speak of it. When they have unlimited funds to do whatever they want, and you don't, they can indict you on any number of things like they tried to do with us."
It just goes to show how strong the government can be, having hold of our lives to the point where they would probably know about us than we do! And yet there is so little we can do except hope that someday, someday these people will be exposed for what they have really been doing.
Sources:
https://privacysos.org/blog/william-binney-nsas-total-information-awareness-bait-and-switch/
https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=4990
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