Watching you.

DARPA’s Information Awareness Office has a really creepy logo: a pyramid surmounted by a floating eye, which is shining a beam of light onto the Earth. Now that the Homeland Security Act has been signed into law, these guys are going to town, and $243 million has already been earmarked for the office’s snoopy “Total Information Awareness” project. “This could be the perfect storm for civil liberties in America,” says Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), in this Asia Times story.

Here’s a web site keeping track of the IAO.

Here’s NPR’s report.

“You don’t have to be Marvin Minsky to guess the outcome when Total Information Awareness meets Murphy’s Law: Just imagine if the mistaken entries on your last credit report had spelled not deadbeat but hijacker,” says Paul Boutin, castigating techies for their impotent attempts to muster political power.

Ironically enough, the Feds busted a large identity theft ring yesterday. Now imagine what would happen if these guys had worked in the IAO instead of a credit reporting agency.