FC: Is Poindexter's TIA project not all that bad? By Stuart Taylor

From: Declan McCullagh (declanat_private)
Date: Mon Jan 06 2003 - 15:53:06 PST

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    [I have a tremendous amount of respect for Stuart Taylor, and he is
    correct to the extent he says that new laws will be required for
    Poindexter's TIA plan to be (legally) operated, even putting
    Constitutional questions aside.  He's also correct to imply that DARPA
    and Poindexter will not be the folks who put the Total Information
    Awareness program into operation. That would fall to the FBI, Secret
    Service, or Homeland Security functionaries. But overlooking what
    *could* happen if these conditions were met is simply naive, and I
    suspect Stuart (often a contrarian) is taking his instincts too
    far. Finally, calling Poindexter a "well-meaning patriot" is something
    that I just can't buy. --Declan]
    
    ---
    
    http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/nj/taylor2002-12-10.htm.
    
    The Atlantic Monthly
    
    D.C. Dispatch | December 10, 2002
    
    Legal Affairs
    from National Journal
    
    Big Brother and Another Overblown Privacy Scare
    John Poindexter has no more power to compile a computer dossier on you than
    I do
    by Stuart Taylor Jr.
    
    ....
    
    Editorial writers and other guardians of privacy have had a field day with
    the reports that former Reagan National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter
    has come back as a cross between Dr. Strangelove and Big Brother.
    Poindexter is watching you, or soon will be, his detractors suggest, as
    they lovingly detail his 1990 convictions (later reversed on appeal) for
    his lies to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair. The Web site for
    Poindexter's "Total Information Awareness" program at the Pentagon
    foolishly fans such fears, featuring the slogan "Scientia Est
    Potentia"-Knowledge Is Power-complete with an ominous, all-seeing eye atop
    a pyramid.
    
    Poindexter is "getting the 'data-mining' power to snoop on every public and
    private act of every American," hyperventilated William Safire of The New
    York Times, in a November 14 column that helped touch off a frenzy of
    similar stuff. The Homeland Security Act, claimed Safire, would put
    Poindexter in control of a vast government database, containing "every
    purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy
    and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit ... complaints
    from nosy neighbors to the FBI," and much more.
    
    Blather, nonsense, piffle, and flapdoodle. Poindexter has no more (and
    probably less) power to compile a computer dossier on you than I do. He has
    no more power to invade your privacy than the Pentagon procurement officer
    for a new machine gun has to shoot you with it. He might like to create a
    grand central database in which to fish through billions of transactions
    and other records for clues on possible terrorists. But he got no such
    authority from the homeland security bill and-given his Iran-Contra
    baggage-he never will get it.
    
    The job of the brainy, technologically adept Poindexter is to develop
    technology, not set policy. He hopes (says his program's Web site) to
    "revolutionize the ability of the United States to detect, classify, and
    identify foreign terrorists-and decipher their plans." The goal-one to
    which many privacy guardians seem stunningly indifferent-is to thwart
    terrorist attacks and thus to save lives.
    
    Poindexter is a high-level official of the Defense Advanced Research
    Projects Agency, which helped create the Internet. His office is working on
    what he calls a "prototype system," using "synthetic transactions" and
    other, mostly simulated data to test the capacity of computer-based
    pattern-recognition techniques known as "data-mining" to home in on people
    who might be terrorists. His office vaguely acknowledges that it is already
    providing technology to military intelligence agencies for use in analyzing
    data these agencies have legally obtained. Because of the possible effect
    on privacy of these current activities, and because any broader system
    could ultimately work well only by continuously monitoring all of us-or at
    least all foreigners-Congress should do some continuous monitoring of its
    own and explore whether to strengthen protections such as the Privacy Act.
    
    Underneath the flap about Poindexter, a well-meaning patriot cursed with
    abysmal judgment, lie important questions that have been glossed over as
    though inconsequential. How can we identify future Mohamed Attas before
    they murder hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of us? What
    kinds of data-mining might penetrate their plans before it is too late?
    What exactly would be the risks to privacy, and how can we minimize them?
    Might this be the only way "for us to survive as a civilization," as
    Stanford University computer scientist Jeffrey Ullman suggested in an
    interview with Salon's Farhad Manjoo?
    
    [...]
    
    
    
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