[Yesterday I forwarded Thomas' writeup of John Woodward's RAND facecam report: (http://www.politechbot.com/p-02386.html) I copied John on that post. He phoned me this afternoon to take issue with the article; I said I'd be happy to forward his response. Below you'll see it and a reply from Thomas. --Declan] ******** From: Woodward, John [mailto:woodwardat_private] Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2001 12:59 PM To: declan Cc: 'tcgreeneat_private' Subject: Erroneous Report Declan: On Monday, August 13, 2001, you distributed an article by Mr. Thomas Greene entitled, "Think tank urges face-scanning of the masses". Among other things, Mr. Greene informs the reader that "The famous Rand Organization http://www.rand.org, a putatively non-partisan think tank, has come out in favor of using face-scanning technology to violate the privacy of the innocent masses. . . ." I would like to correct one of the mistakes in Mr. Greene's article. Mr. Greene's article is based on an issue paper I authored, "Super Bowl Surveillance: Facing Up to Biometrics". This issue paper contains a prominent disclaimer at the beginning of the text that informs the reader, "The views and conclusions expressed in issue papers are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of RAND or its research sponsors." Mr. Greene fails to mention this point in his article and he incorrectly attributes views to RAND that RAND has never expressed. Please let your readers know of his error. My issue paper is available free of charge in hard and electronic copy at http://www.rand.org/publications/IP/IP209/ Those interested in this issue can read it and form their own opinions of facial recognition. I would appreciate it if you would distribute this information to your politics and technology mailing list so that none of your readers is left with the false impression that the views expressed in my issue paper were those of RAND. Sincerely yours, John John D. Woodward, Jr., Esq. RAND 1200 South Hayes Street, Arlington, Virginia 22201-5050 ******** From: "Thomas C. Greene" <tcgreeneat_private> Subject: RE: Erroneous Report Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 16:55:05 -0700 Rand says, "Although issue papers are formally reviewed, authors have substantial latitude to express provocative views without doing full justice to other perspectives." This sounds like typical corporate/bureaucratic responsibility dodging to me. 'We're sort of behind it, and sort of not, according to our convenieence.' If Rand wants to make your paper available, then they should have the spine to take the heat when someone decides to criticize it. I notice that *you* aren't whining about the criticism (much to your credit). If they can't handle an attack over material which they voluntarily choose to make available, then they have no business playing with the grownups in the rhetorical arena. chrz, tom ******** ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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