Mathematician John Allen Paulos (author of Innumeracy) has the numbers that show why Total Information Awareness won't work, and will have a tremendous cost in both money and freedom.

...the system will arrest almost 3 million innocent people, about 3,000 times the number of guilty ones. And that occurs, remember, only because we're assuming the system has these amazing powers of discernment. If its powers are anything like our present miserable predictive capacities, an even greater percentage of those arrested will be innocent.

Pardon me for interrpting, but here's a tidbit I didn't know until today: the DC-X Delta Clipper did have a connection to Brilliant Pebbles.

http://www.afa.org/magazine/Nov2001/1101spaceplane.html

...

The next [ after NASP ] "spaceplane experimental" was an early success that raised hopes for both military and commercial applications for a spaceplane. McDonnell Douglas won a contract in 1991 to build what became the DC-X Delta Clipper. This single-stage-to-orbit vehicle grew out of an SDI requirement for a single-stage, reusable vehicle that could put Brilliant Pebbles, a component of a ballistic missile defense system, into orbit at a reasonable price. It was managed by the Air Force for SDIO, later the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.

...

Holy shit. That must be some ultra-secret stuff. I worked for one of the BP primes and I hadn't heard one thing about DCX. Or any requirements related thereto. I read the entire BP RFP and don't recall a word about SSTO vehicles. 'Course, that could be some self-erasing security feature.

Our plan was to use Titan. I kinda suggested Energiya but wasn't taken all that seriously, it being the early '90s and all.

No, actually, DC-X was originally funded by SDIO, as a possibly cheaper means of SDI launches (which were at that time, among other things, Brilliant Pebbles).

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