WRITTEN QUESTION E-3402/02 by Marco Cappato (NI) to the Commission. Total Information Awareness.
Date: 2002-11-29
Institutions: European Parliament, Provisional data
Subjects: EU law, United States, action programme, data protection, database, information system, protection of privacy, terrorism

10.7.2003

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 161 E/89

The Commission has not been aware of any complaints, irregularities or other problems concerning the
implementation of the project Ariadne to date. If, following ad hoc checks as a result of a complaint, or
the regular checks foreseen by the structural fund Regulations, it appears that such irregularities, or other
problems have occurred, the Commission will take all the necessary measures as provided in those
Regulations. It will decide which checks to undertake, and where, once it has obtained the Member State’s
comments on the matter.

(1)

Final beneficiaries.

(2003/C 161 E/094)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-3402/02

by Marco Cappato (NI) to the Commission

(29 November 2002)

Subject: Total Information Awareness

According to some articles that have appeared in the press, the United States Government approved last
February a USD 200 million budget to develop two new offices: the Information Exploitation Office and
the Information Awareness Office. The latter is notably building a programme called Total Information
Awareness (TIA), whose aim is the collection, integration and treatment of any kind of information in
order to detect suspect individual behaviours and identify potential terrorists. Some of the planned
activities of TIA are the development of the Genoa I software for the clandestine exploration of all
electronic databases and other forms of data-mining and information collection at international level.

Given the global nature of electronic communications, the system would have immediate implications for
and be effective on communications even between EU citizens.

Can the Commission ask the US Government for confirmation of this information? If this information is
confirmed, does the Commission not think that the planned activities of TIA would be in breach of EU
directives on data protection, and of other relevant treaties between the EU, its Member States and the US?
What measures will the Commission take in order to have EU law and European citizens’ rights and
freedoms fully respected?

Answer given by Mr Liikanen on behalf of the Commission

(28 January 2003)

The Commission is aware of a programme called ‘Total Information Awareness (TIA)’ managed by the
‘Information Awareness Office’ of the American Department of Defence’s Research and Development
(R & D) agency ‘Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’ (DARPA).

According to publicly available information, the TIA programme would focus on the development of
architectures for a ‘large-scale counter-terrorism database’, building on existing sources and new sources to
be created, as well as on new tools for processing information for subsequent inclusion and analysis which
would enable ‘actionable intelligence’. The goal would be to improve the ability of the United States to
‘detect, classify and identify foreign terrorists’ and their plans and thereby enable the United States to ‘take
timely action to successfully preempt and defeat terrorist acts’. The Commission has no specific contacts
with American authorities on this programme. Operational use of the prototypes developed under this
programme could imply cooperation with authorities outside the United States. Where applicable,
Community law, including privacy rules, must be fully respected.