In 2002-2003, the Bush administration put together Total Information Awareness program, which was to create a vast database that could be used for citizen surveillance. Outrage ensued, and the Bush administration found that not even lamely renaming the program Terrorism Information Awareness could stem it, so they withdrew the program. The outrage was helped along by the fact that the Democrats were in the opposition party at the time and a few of the good ones (Russ Feingold and Ron Wyden) introduced bills to halt the program, which helped make the protests legit (credit also to conservative pundit William Safire).

The program never really died, however; it just went underground. And now the Wall Street Journal has a good article about its use under the Obama administration.

Under the new rules issued in March, the National Counterterrorism Center, known as NCTC, can obtain almost any database the government collects that it says is "reasonably believed" to contain "terrorism information." The list could potentially include almost any government database, from financial forms submitted by people seeking federally backed mortgages to the health records of people who sought treatment at Veterans Administration hospitals.

The key point, though, is that there is no resistance this time.

The National Counterterrorism Center's ideas faced no similar public resistance. For one thing, the debate happened behind closed doors. In addition, unlike the Pentagon, the NCTC was created in 2004 specifically to use data to connect the dots in the fight against terrorism.

And what the article doesn't mention is that fact that the Democrats in congress will be silent about it this time around. Other than, say, Ron Paul, i don't imagine that Republicans will raise much of an objection, and the way they've been howling and moaning about every ginned up controversy since Obama took office, i don't think they'd have much credibility even if they did.

Our only hope now is that this thing they've created develops its own AI and turns on its masters.