Conservative columnist William Safire warns of threats to privacy in You Are A Suspect. His concern is the DARPA “Total Information Awareness” program run by John Poindexter, whose goal is to create what the Defense Department describes as “a virtual, centralized grand database.” Safire writes “[Poindexter] is determined to break down the wall between commercial snooping and secret government intrusion. The disgraced admiral dismisses such necessary differentiation as bureaucratic “stovepiping.” And he has been given a $200 million budget to create computer dossiers on 300 million Americans.”