'Total Information Awareness' System: threat to privacy?

• Author: Book, Elizabeth G.
• Position: Security Beat

Americans shouldn't worry too much about the Defense Department's controversial plans for a Total Information Awareness (TIA) System, according to Amitai Etzioni, a professor at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., and author of "The Limits of Privacy."

The TIA system--now being developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency--is an experimental project attempting to search vast quantities of everyday commercial transactions, looking for links and patterns related to terrorist activities. The system would wade through electronic records of such transactions as applications for passports, visas and drivers licenses; reservations for airline tickets and rental cars; credit card purchases, and even medical data.

Civil rights advocates complain that TIA would intrude unnecessarily into the personal privacy of ordinary citizens. But Etzioni, speaking at a forum sponsored by the Potomac Institute for...