John Poindexter - Recall To Public Service

Recall To Public Service

From January 2002, to August 2003, Poindexter served as the Director of the DARPA Information Awareness Office (IAO). The mission of the IAO was to imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate and transition information technologies, components, and prototype closed-loop information systems. This aimed to counter asymmetric threats (most notably, terrorist threats) by achieving total information awareness and thus aiding preemption; national security warning; and, national security decision making.

Poindexter faced criticism from the media and some politicians about the Policy Analysis Market project, a theoretical prediction market that would have rewarded participants for accurately predicting geopolitical trends in the Middle East. This was portrayed in the media as allowing participants to profit from the assassination of heads of state and acts of terrorism due to such events being mentioned on illustrative sample screens showing the interface. The controversy over the proposed futures market led to a Congressional audit of the IAO in general, which revealed a fundamental lack of concern for privacy protection of American citizens. Funding for the IAO was subsequently cut and Poindexter retired from DARPA on August 12, 2003.

Read more about this topic:  John Poindexter

Famous quotes containing the words recall, public and/or service:

    That which resembles most living one’s life over again, seems to be to recall all the circumstances of it; and, to render this remembrance more durable, to record them in writing.
    Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)

    The story is told of a man who, seeing one of the thoroughbred stables for the first time, suddenly removed his hat and said in awed tones, “My Lord! The cathedral of the horse.”
    —For the State of Kentucky, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    The more the specific feelings of being under obligation range themselves under a supreme principle of human dependence the clearer and more fertile will be the realization of the concept, indispensable to all true culture, of service; from the service of God down to the simple social relationship as between employer and employee.
    Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)