IPI Commends Senate for Defunding the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness Program (TIA).

1/27/2003

From: Misty Woodruff of Institute for Policy Innovation, 972-874-5139 or misty@ipi.org

DALLAS, TX., Jan. 27 -- "The Senate should be commended for taking steps to defund the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness (TIA) program and for preventing the unnecessary death and suffering of thousands of people in the future," says Tom Giovanetti, president of the Institute for Policy Innovation.

Mr. Giovanetti's November op/ed, "A Tool for Future Tyrants," was among several of the first published works that helped expose the Total Information Awareness program and its threat to personal privacy. (Visit http://www.ipi.org to read his op/ed).

"If you build it, they will come. If you build it, they will use it.

"If we amass a great amount of financial capital, or bandwidth, or rubber bands, someone will find a creative use for it. That's good. But if we amass an enormous database of the personal information of American citizens, someone will find a creative use for it, too. The problem is that we cannot assume that the people who later use the tool will have the same integrity and assumptions as those who created the tool."

Mr. Giovanetti is available for interview to discuss the Senate's defunding of this dangerous Pentagon program.

Tom Giovanetti is the president of the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI), a free-market public policy research organization based in Dallas, Texas.