original
WASHINGTON, April 20 (UPI) -- Private sector intelligence contractor Aptima, Inc. has hired a key figure from the Pentagon's canceled Total Information Awareness project.
Robert Popp was the second-ranking official on the program, the deputy to retired Adm. John Poindexter, the controversial Reagan-era national security adviser and Iran-Contra figure.
The company, which bills itself as the "pioneer in human-centered engineering," and has over 200 contracts with the Department of Defense, announced the hiring of Popp as executive vice president in a Wednesday statement.
The Total Information Awareness program was a project run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA -- the blue-sky technology thinkers in the Pentagon.
The aim was to comb through vast amounts of data -- like credit card transactions, phone connections, and airline passenger manifests -- looking for patterns and relationships that might indicate terrorist activity. But angry lawmakers stripped funding for the program out of the unclassified DARPA budget after a storm of protests about the privacy implications of the project that its defenders said was fueled by misunderstandings.
After the effort was reportedly moved to the Pentagon's classified budget, Popp went on to be deputy head of DARPA's Information Exploitation Office, where he oversaw a $240 million portfolio of intelligence and surveillance programs, according to a biography released by Aptima.
No comments:
Post a Comment