"Big Brother Will Be Watching America" : Post-9/11 Mass Surveillance Expansion and Resistance

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) 2002 project titled Total Information Awareness (TIA) was a data-mining mass surveillance program that aimed to detect and preempt terrorist threats and ease communication and analysis between intelligence agencies. Public backlash against the program was swift and appeared successful, as Congress defunded it in 2003. However, the underlying components of TIA lived on in classified National Security Agency (NSA) programs, and, in coordination with private tech companies, the United States' surveillance apparatus expanded tremendously after this public defeat. In 2013, when Edward Snowden released a series of documents to the press revealing the extent of NSA surveillance, corporate data collection had become so entrenched in everyday life that the intense public reaction did not produce the same bipartisan support or congressional impact that had driven TIA underground. While the literature on surveillance expansion in the United States after 9/11 is substantial, scholars have neglected the qualitative difference between the success of public critique in the case of TIA and the bifurcated reactions to the 2013 NSA program leaks. This thesis argues that the spectacle of surveillance in 2002 mobilized public reaction, prompting Congress to publicly defund the program, whereas the invisibility and privatization of surveillance after its defunding led to widespread resignation, preventing effective resistance.