[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? [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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