Spy vs Spy

The TIA (Terrorist Information Act) has been the subject of many a discussion of late, especially here at AO. Now it appears that a group of good folks at MIT are countering with a system to let the people keep an eye on the government, a group of tools made available by GIA , or Governmental Information Awareness.

Quote:

---

"Our goal is develop a technology which empowers citizens to form their own intelligence agency; to gather, sort and act on information they gather about the government," said MIT graduate student Ryan McKinley, who developed GIA under the direction of Christopher Csikszentmihályi, an assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab's Computing Culture group.

"Only by employing such technologies can we hope to have a government by the people and for the people," McKinley said.

GIA allows people to explore data, track events, find patterns and build profiles related to specific government officials or political issues. Information about campaign finance, corporate ties and even religion and schooling can be accessed easily. Real-time alerts can be generated when news of interest is breaking.

---

Original article here.

I found the irony of finding and reading this article on Independance Day to be quite delicious. ;)

"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives." - James Madison

no doubt that group will in turn be watched by the gov.

at least they are doing something. I don't like this trend toward a vchip state.