TIA was not discontinued:

"NSA continues controversial data-mining program.

Total Information Awareness projects, shut down by Congress in 2003, funded under different plan."



http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0224/dailyUpdate.html

Surely you aren't comparing a special-purpose demographics database with the all-encompassing TIA program? If you have a problem with this kind of database, you need to take a look at companies like Acxiom.

After a quick read of the article to which you linked in this post, the fundamental difference seems to be that programs like TIA were planning on using information that is ostensibly private (e.g., credit card transactions, phone records, etc.), while the political databases are based upon information that is already in the public domain (e.g., voter registration information). While one could argue for the value of a TIA-type program, it's certainly not the case that there is a comparable invasion of legitimate privacy interests in the two types of data-mining programs you have described here.

Assuming that the data is acquired and used in legal ways, there's a huge huge difference between a private organization doing it and the government doing it. (The private organization doesn't have police, for one thing.)

That said, it's still a privacy concern, in exactly the same way as it is for big business to do the same thing. People on the left and in the libertarian sphere raise privacy concerns in regard to the private sector datamining for pure profit all the time.

So.. are you trying to say that because some Democrat is doing it, it's okay for the Government to do it?

That aside, I hope you realize the difference between a political database and a Government one.

What kindof conservative are you? You do realize this country was founded with a fundamental mistrust of the Government as its bedrock.

I'm continuously amazed at the number of people willing to throw away freedoms because of the terrorists. If you want to live in a police state, that's fine, but you'll have to change the Constitution to get it.

Republicans are already light-years ahead of Dems in doing this exact thing. Republicans have had these kinds of extremely sophisticated databases for several years now, and they enlarge them every cycle. And the Republicans are smart to have them.

Are you ranting because Dems are doing it now too, or are you under the impression that Repubs dont have databases like this? Or perhaps you are aware of Republican supremacy in political data collection and just choose not to mention that part.

Either way, your rant is silly.

You mean the same type of datamining that the Republican Party uses on their own memebers as well? Well then yes, I guess you can categorize this as 'good' datamining.

Just chiming in with so many others: Comparing gov't datamining of *private* data (credit card purchases, phone calls, etc.) with sophisticated analysis of user-proffered data isn't apples and oranges; it's grenades and oranges.

That said, I will go on to say I tend to feel the same way about this kind of objectification of the polity as I do about other similar psychic meddling, such as modern marketing, which regards us as food animals. I know that all political apparati that pretend to be serious engage in this activity. They want to play every card they can get their hands on.