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September 21, 2003

In August of 2002, the first reports began to trickle out describing a new Department of Defense program known as Total Information Awareness, operated by President Reagan's former Deputy National Security Adviser, John M. Poindexter.

Conceptually, I decided to create a personal TIA program to track my own electronic movements, scanning in what paper receipts I kept, and looking back through my own credit history to map out and to document every single electronically-recorded transaction I've made. The fact of the matter is, there's a huge trail of information available about each and every one of us. Unless you live completely off the grid, with cash-only transactions and earnings kept in a shoebox, there are bits and pieces to be found scattered everywhere. As William Gibson puts it in his short story Johnny Mnemonic:

"And the Yakuza would be settling its ghostly bulk over the city's data banks, probing for faint images of me reflected in numbered accounts, securities transactions, bills for utilities. We're an information economy. They teach you that in school. What they don't tell you is that it's impossible to move, to live, to operate at any level without leaving traces, bits, seemingly meaningless fragments of personal information. Fragments that can be retrieved, amplified..."

When the government tells you not to be worried about their information-gathering capabilities, take their word with a tablespoon of salt. The maps that I've created have a fraction of the detail that could be created with unfettered access to medical, financial, and cellular transaction records.

September 23, 2003: Slashdotted