Two cheeky fellows at MIT have turned the tables on the US government and its Total Information Awareness program by creating a website that offers information on government officials. Called Government Information Awareness the bonus is that anyone can add their own intelligence reports on officials, with no requirement that the information be verified. One of the project\’s creators, Chris Csikszentmihalyi, refers to it as \”sort of a citizen\’s intelligence agency.\”
The TIA, now renamed the Terrorist Information act, after a public outcry over privacy concerns, was created to track possible terrorist activity by analyzing vast amounts of information stored in government and private databases, such as credit card data.
The rest of the story here from Boston.com and here from Wired. Also a great discussion at slashdot. GIA page is very slow to load, or will not load at all, as of 7/5 a.m.
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