The puppetmaster

Hmmm... When you read about the latest DARPA projects you can get really concerned. What's scariest- they are planning to create this thng: TIA, a Terrorist (Total) Information Awareness program. This is scary! A thinking computer, monitoring the net, looking for terrorists, choosing who is the threat and who is not.
Just like the Puppetmaster in Ghost in the Shell or Icarus in Deus Ex, a living, self-aware entity created in a computer, having GODLY power. Nobody knows what this entity might do with this power. Should this be tolerated?
We live in the age of very wide-spread computerisation. The NSA Echelon system is online for two or more decades. How does this system work today? Do you think they already have something like the TIA? While scanning our mail, looking for the keywords (mentioned lately) does it use its own will choosing wich correspondence is a threat to the national security, or is the mail sent further, to be checked by human personel?

This really sounds like the government coming out rather quietly about true A.I. computer equipment. Exciting at the same time as scary (if youve seen the terminator movies). You may be going slightly overboard with the GODLY power idea though.