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[Total Information Awareness (TIA)] = (Total Information Convenience + U.S. Internal Revenue Returns)
BACKGROUND
Total Information Awareness, the Orwellian program of the 2002 Bush government, is not dead. Congress acted in 2003 to strike it down, but like a hydra, its one TIA trunk has sprouted 7 more in organizations throughout the shadier regions of the U.S. government.
What, me panic? On the contrary! This just means that we have the opportunity to seize and redistribute all those millions of dollars in software/server technology for the use of the people. I'm proposing that the U.S. launch a cyber-post-office project by leasing (and granting to academies and appropriate non-profits) its voice-to-text server/software solutions.
APPLICATIONS
One possible application: instead of typing an email on a tiny Blackberry keypad, speak your message to the TIA/NSA server and have it sent back to your screen as text in near-real-time. Make a few edits using the 10-key phone pad plus arrows of a regular-old cellphone, and press 'send'. This kind of audacious co-optation of the belly of the beast may be fool-hardy, but it also may be the only way for the Public to take back what's ours: a decent return on our hard-earned tax dollars, as well as a sense of ownership over our information media. I'm not saying that use of NSA servers for routine civilian communication might not have problems, but let's face the reality: NSA has free access to AT&T digital switches, anyway, so we may as well face the complexities of working in a world of insecure information, rather than pretend they don't exist.
REFERENCES
Electronic Frontier Foundation