http://news.com.com/2010-1069-977908.html Perspective: Tech's answer to Big Brother By Declan McCullagh December 16, 2002, 4:00 AM PT WASHINGTON--Why is everyone so surprised that the U.S. government wants to create a Total Information Awareness database with details about everything you do? This is an unsurprising result of having so much information about our lives archived on the computers of our credit card companies, our banks, our health insurance companies and government agencies. Now a Defense Department agency is devising a way to link these different systems together to create a kind of digital alter ego of each of us. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, this proposed centralization was inevitable--and it's only going to get worse. Blame retired Admiral John Poindexter, national security adviser for former President Ronald Reagan, who returned to the Pentagon in February to run a creepy new agency that's trying to create this mammoth surveillance and information-analysis system. It's called Total Information Awareness, and it's funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's a good idea, or that it's consistent with the traditional American values of limited government and a sharp demarcation between the private and the public sector. I'm not even sure if Poindexter's brainchild could ever work. What I am saying is that if our personal information--some of it extraordinarily sensitive--is archived in corporate or government databases and protected only by the weak shield of the law, it's vulnerable to federal snoops. [...] Technology offers a better way to preserve our rights against government overreaching. New crises may prompt Congress to vote unanimously to skewer the Bill of Rights. But technological protections don't vary with the whims of politicians or shifts in Supreme Court majorities. The sad thing is that for years we've known about technology that can slow down this mass "databasification" of American society. We just haven't used it. [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ Recent CNET News.com articles: http://news.search.com/search?q=declan -------------------------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Wed Dec 18 2002 - 18:11:00 PST