Spies and lies (with a side of freedom fries)

Remember TIA (Total Information Awareness), the zen-sounding governmental agency that was finally going to be the biggest of all the Big Brothers? Remember how they proposed to make us all safer by attempting to construct the biggest data mining and electro-surveillance program in history? Remember the comforting logo that put them out of business, at least for the moment? "Scientia est Potentia": Knowledge is Power, it says. Indeed. Whether you are Francis Bacon or Michel Foucault, we can all agree on that. On the Daily Show the other night, John Stewart put it most simply: "It seems as though the government knows increasingly more about the people, and the people know increasingly less about the government." Hmm... always reminds me of the symbolic economy of the police officer's mirrored sunglasses. To me that is what the police state looks like: a one way mirror.



Now TIA has been resurrected in the form of ADVISE. The Christian Science Monitor did a nice article about it.* This time the acronym is so awkward, no one can get scared (Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement). And there are no logos that might rouse the humors of the Left Behind crowd. The program has achieved its ideal state: not an invisibility, but rather an absent presence: present in its very deniability. We might be concerned for the moment about phone tapping, and Alberto Gonzales might not ever answer any questions in front of subcommittees. Electronic surveillance is a much bigger question, though, than the telephone. ADVISE concerns every aspect of life in the information economy. ADVISE is the "will to truth" of the cyberstate: the citizen soul must be accounted for, disciplined, and controlled on every possible microscopic facet, polished like a silicon jewel to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Wanna do ... something?


*"Christian Science Monitor" would have been a good replacement name for TIA, don't you think? I must say I'm so impressed with the CSM these past few years; they are truly one of the last good investigative outlets in mainstream news.