DARPA awards TIA grants for research

• By William Jackson
• May 30, 2003

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has approved more than two dozen grants for its controversial Terrorism Information Awareness data-mining program.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center earlier this year made public documents about TIA research proposals that it had obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The documents included approval letters for 26 of 180 proposals submitted in response to a March 2002 request for proposals.

'EPIC anticipates receiving more documents covering various aspects of DARPA's data-mining activities over the next few months,' the organization said in a statement.
DARPA solicited proposals for:

• Large repositories without the constraints of commercial database products, and associated privacy protection technologies


• Collaboration, automation and cognitive aids to model threats and analyze risks


• End-to-end, closed-loop prototype systems to integrate technology and components from existing DARPA programs.

The DARPA solicitation said: 'The size and duration will vary according to the type of effort. Proposers should define partitions so that the annual budget for each is in the $200,000 to $1 million range.'

Congress authorized an initial $10 million for the program for this fiscal year. The Bush administration asked for another $20 million in its fiscal 2004 budget proposal.