Big Brother and Another Overblown Privacy Scare

[R. A. Hettinga]

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?

"By looking at all kinds of information about citizens and visitors, we
would know who's renting Ryder trucks or buying fertilizer for bombs or
fermenters to make biological warfare agents, or who is visiting Internet
Web sites to find instructions for designing a nuclear weapon." That's not
Poindexter talking. That's Ashton Carter, a former Clinton Defense
Department official who is now a professor at Harvard's John F. Kennedy
School of Government, as quoted in the Carnegie Reporter. Carter is one of
44 members of a high-powered task force sponsored by the Markle Foundation,
which explored the potential uses (and abuses) of data-mining in a
thoughtful October 7 report titled "Protecting America's Freedom in the
Information Age."

Data-mining and analysis can mean anything from a simple Google search of a
known suspect's name to constant sifting by supercomputers through vast
private and governmental databases to identify people with purchasing,
travel, or behavioral patterns that experts consider to be shared by
terrorists. The Markle report describes how "the use of watchout lists....
and access to quite modest forms of data" could have thwarted the September
11 attacks.

For starters, running the names of all airline ticket purchasers through
the government's "watch list" of suspected terrorists would have flagged
two of the 19 hijackers-to-be in August 2001. Checking their addresses
could have led to three more, including Mohamed Atta. His phone records
could have led to another five. An 11th had used the same frequent flier
number as one of first two. Checks on recent flight-school attendees,
expired visas, and other data might have led to the rest.

Future terrorists using false names, the Markle report notes, "can still be
identified ... with a biometric algorithm derived from a photograph of the
face" or fingerprints, which "can go into a government database when ...
someone applies for a visa, or is arrested, or receives a driver's license,
for instance." Such data, together with intelligence about suspected
terrorists and their "networks of contacts and support," could be used to
screen people seeking access to dangerous pathogens, extremely hazardous
materials, or critical electronic networks.

Should we bar this sort of thing because it would subject some innocent
people to unwelcome scrutiny? Or because some rogue officials might be
willing to risk exposure and disgrace by leaking or threatening to leak
information about pornographic video rentals, extramarital adventures, or
the like to harass or blackmail political dissidents? Should we eschew
fishing expeditions through Ryder truck rental records and fertilizer
purchases?

Not if we want to prevent terrorist mass murders. And I, for one, am a lot
less worried about the government snooping through my credit card bills and
psychiatric records than about being anthraxed in the subway or killed by a
nuclear explosion in my downtown Washington office.

We should, of course, minimize the risks of abuse, error, and invasion of
privacy. The Markle task force compiles page after page of suggestions,
including "tools that create audit trails of parties who carry out
searches, that anonymize and minimize information to the greatest extent
possible, and that prevent ... dissemination of irrelevant information to
unauthorized persons or entities."

The important question is whether the risks to privacy posed by any
particular data-mining proposal outweigh the hope that it might save lives.
The answer, in every case, will depend on careful cost-benefit analysis.
For now, rather than running screaming from the room or lobbying Congress
to "shut down" DARPA's work on this potentially life-saving technology-as
The New York Times idiotically demanded-we should remedy the government's
current inability even to "make sense of the prodigious amounts of
information it already has," in the words of Philip Zelikow, executive
director of the Markle task force.

Far from emulating Big Brother, the government has so far failed even to
pull together widely available, not-very-private data that could be useful
in screening airline passengers, transporters of extremely hazardous
materials, and so on. Indeed, a Senate Appropriations subcommittee recently
killed a $20 million program to research such modest forms of data
analysis, says Zelikow, who is also the director of the University of
Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs and a member of President Bush's
Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

The Markle report expresses skepticism about the effectiveness of the more
exotic-and scarier-approach of "endless mining of vast new government data
warehouses to find intricate correlations," especially those based on
psychological profiles. By generating large numbers of false positives,
Zelikow says, that approach could lead to intrusions on innocent people,
ill will, lawsuits, and a political backlash against even the most
effective and least intrusive forms of data-mining. Those who are serious
about saving lives understand the need for safeguards to allay concerns
about privacy.

And "the greatest danger to American privacy," Zelikow says, "would arise
after another major terrorist attack. Those who pose privacy and security
as warring goals may thus end up getting neither. The emerging center on
these issues will be made up of people in both parties who see privacy and
security as complementary goals that have to be achieved together and in
balance."

-- 
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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