There's just too much here to even begin to cope with.

November 23, 2002 12:11 AM

An official Q&A with the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, alludes to some extremely scary/interesting tidbits-- the Office of Strategic Influence is still alive, John Poindexter can do anything he pleases with DARPA, we just might renew nuclear weapons testing. Don't worry, though. Rummy sez: "Anyone who is concerned ought not be. Anyone with any concern ought to be able to sleep well tonight. Nothing terrible is going to happen."
posted by LimePi (7 comments total)

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain"
posted by owillis at 12:34 AM on November 23, 2002

... Trust me: I'm from the government.

Jeesh... assurances of absolute safety from any administration's Sec. of Defense actually makes me feel very unsafe.
posted by nathan_teske at 2:17 AM on November 23, 2002

Offical "Sky Is Falling" post of the day.
posted by MidasMulligan at 6:18 AM on November 23, 2002

Not inconsistent with Rumsfeld's prior statements -- if you'd read them.

And a reasonable defense of the TIA project by someone who's built enterprise databases before.

"Hence the legitimate point: DARPA is developing core technologies that, on their face, seem kind of obviously good things to have. It isn't really DARPA's job to decide what the appropriate rules would be for using the technologies; that's up to Congress."

Perhaps more pertinently, he doubts it will work.
posted by dhartung at 7:07 AM on November 23, 2002

dhartung: it's not important that it works. it's only important that it is useful.
posted by lescour at 7:59 AM on November 23, 2002

Offical "Sky Is Falling" post of the day.

Then this must go here:The 4th Amendment: RIP
posted by homunculus at 1:29 PM on November 23, 2002

Hendrik Hertzberg does a nice job of discussing the Total Information Awareness weirdness in the New Yorker.
posted by ahimsakid at 2:44 PM on December 6, 2002