A plan for police to share information with other law enforcement agencies in the region was approved 5-2 by the Pacific Grove City Council on Wednesday after a discussion about whether participating in the exchange might violate privacy rights.
Police Chief Darius Engles asked that the city sign on to Urban Area Security Initiative, a program funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that provides a criminal database for the region.
Yeah, I feel safe…
From Wikipedia
The Information Awareness Office (IAO) was established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in January 2002 to bring together several DARPA projects focused on applying surveillance and information technology to track and monitor “terrorists” and other asymmetric threats to national security, by achieving Total Information Awareness (TIA). This would be achieved by creating enormous computer databases to gather and store the personal information of everyone in the United States, including personal e-mails, social network analysis, credit card records, phone calls, medical records, and numerous other sources, without any requirement for a search warrant[1]. This information would then be analyzed to look for suspicious activities, connections between individuals, and “threats”[2]. Additionally, the program included funding for biometric surveillance technologies that could identify and track individuals using surveillance cameras, and other methods[2].
P.G. Police Joins The Information Awareness Office