this is SO clever (NOTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT)

you find out something being done (i.e. collecting data on ordinary united states citizens) is illegal and immoral and you pass laws to prohibit it. THEN some higher powers get around it by disbanding the original data gathering organizations and forming NEW ONES with NEW NAMES,so the OLD laws (in their minds) do not apply. Data mining program continues after lawmakers order it closed
RAW STORY Published: February 24, 2006 A controversial intelligence data mining program, which was closed by lawmakers over privacy concerns two years ago, has continued to receive funding and remained in operation under different code names in different agencies, according to today's National Journal. Excerpts from the Journal's article follow:
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Research under the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program -- which developed technologies to predict terrorist attacks by mining government databases and the personal records of people in the United States -- was moved from the Pentagon's research-and-development agency to another group, which builds technologies primarily for the National Security Agency, according to documents obtained by National Journal and to intelligence sources familiar with the move. The names of key projects were changed, apparently to conceal their identities, but their funding remained intact, often under the same contracts.
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Two of the most important components of the TIA program were moved to the Advanced Research and Development Activity, housed at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Md., documents and sources confirm. One piece was the Information Awareness Prototype System, the core architecture that tied together numerous information extraction, analysis, and dissemination tools developed under TIA. The prototype system included privacy-protection technologies that may have been discontinued or scaled back following the move to ARDA. .../...............