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Chilly Scenes of Winter on the Web
It's 8 a.m. on a snowy February weekend morning. You have awoken afresh, and are yearning to get outdoors for some winter fun. You take a brief moment to log in and connect to the Web sites for both Winter Activities in Western New York (http://rin.buffalo.edu/s_comm/park-rec/wint.html) and Winter Attractions in Western New York (http://www.westernny.com/winter.html), where you peruse lists of areas for skiing, skating or sledding, and consider winter festivals, carnivals, fairs or performances to add variety to your weekend.
As you drive through downtown Buffalo heading for a Southtown's park, you may not realize that the image of your vehicle is picked up by a Webcam, and might be closely observed by an unknown official monitoring your activities from a site similar to those appearing on The New York Live Cams Web site (http://home.con2.com/easysurf/cams/).
Meanwhile, your friend does not share your appreciation of the frigid Western New York climate, but would rather stay indoors and surf the net. But your friend's Internet activities also are apt to be under surveillance, thanks to the Total Information Awareness (TIA) Program headed by John Poindexter from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) (http://www.darpa.mil/iao). Ostensibly an anti-terrorism measure, critics and watchdog agencies emphasize that the TIA Program threatens individual liberty and privacy to an extent that exceeds Orwell's dystopian visions. According to the American Civil Liberties Union's report "Bigger Monster, Weaker Chains: The Growth of an American Surveillance Society" (http://www.aclu.org/Files/OpenFile.cfm?id=11572), video-and-data surveillance by enforcement agencies is more pervasive than ever and not only poses a dangerous threat to the privacy of Americans, but assaults the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as well.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center also has kept a close watch on the impact and implications of the TIA Program. It offers basic information, late breaking news and links to other press stories at its TIA page (http://www.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/). Dispatches from the Cato Institute (http://www.cato.org/current/civil-liberties/index.html) also track the most current developments of the TIA Program as it wends its way through Congress.
Later that day after your outdoor adventure, while sharing a mocha latte with your friend at a coffeehouse on the Elmwood Strip, you think you spot John Poindexter leaving a local video store. Luckily, your friend has a laptop and while picking up the signal from a local wireless network, surfs to the John Poindexter Awareness Office Web site (http://www.breakyourchains.org/jpao.htm) to report the sighting. To prove that the head of DARPA Information Awareness Office himself is not immune from the surveillance tactics that are outlined in the TIA Program for other Americans, an activist group called Break Your Chains has instituted the Web site so that Poindexter, as well as his associates, can be monitored as they go about their daily lives. You bolt out of the coffeehouse, sprinting in the direction of Poindexter, hoping to share a few words, not noticing the hidden camera following you and not realizing your recent credit-card latte purchase is being pieced together with other electronic records that are part of your file...
—Nina Cascio and Rick McRae, University Libraries