Features

New York Times (01/24/03) P. A12; Clymer, Adam

The Senate voted unanimously on to constrain the implementation of the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness (TIA) Program, an initiative to conduct searches for terrorists by mining Internet mail and online financial, health, and travel records. The legislation gives a 60-day window for the Defense Department to furnish a report detailing the program's costs, motives, its prospective chances for successfully thwarting terrorists, and its impact on civil liberties and privacy; failing to do so after the deadline would result in the suspension of TIA research and development. Meanwhile, use of the system would be restricted to legally sanctioned military and foreign intelligence operations, barring congressional authorization to employ the system within the United States.

See http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/24/politics/24PRIV.html