USACM: Congress should stop Total Information Awareness

[John F. McMullen]

>From Declan's list (The ACM is the oldest and most prestigious computer
organization in the US (ref "Where Wizards Stay Up at Night" - Hafner ..)
and is the ACM in 'johnmac at acm.org')
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 11:32:38 -0800
Subject: A USACM letter on Total Information Awareness
From: Barbara Simons <simons at acm.org>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com>

Hi, Declan.  The following letter is being sent out today.
Regards,
Barbara

http://www.acm.org/usacm/Letters/tia_final.html

-------------------------

January 23, 2003

The Honorable John Warner
Chairman
Senate Committee on Armed Services
228 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC  20510

The Honorable Carl Levin
Senate Committee on Armed Services
228 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC  20510


Dear Chairman Warner and Senator Levin:

On behalf of USACM, the Association for Computing Machinery's U.S. Public
Policy Committee, we are writing to express some concerns regarding the
Total Information Awareness (TIA) Program, sponsored by the Department of
Defense.  We share the nation's desire to improve security against terrorist
acts, and we acknowledge that significant contributions can be made to
public safety and national defense with advances in computing technology.

Research into areas such as new data mining and fusion methods and
privacy-enhancement technologies is needed and welcomed.  However, the
overall surveillance goals of TIA suffer from fundamental flaws that are
based in exceedingly complex and intractable issues of human nature,
economics and law.  Technological research alone cannot make a system such
as TIA viable.

As computer scientists and engineers we have significant doubts that the
computer-based TIA Program will achieve its stated goal of "countering
terrorism through prevention".  Further, we believe that the vast amount of
information and misinformation collected by any system resulting from this
program is likely to be misused to the detriment of many innocent American
citizens.

Because of serious security, privacy, economic, and personal risks
associated with the development of a vast database surveillance system, we
recommend a rigorous, independent review of these aspects of TIA.  Such a
review should include an examination of the technical feasibility and
practical reality of the entire program.  USACM would be pleased to assist
in such an effort.

Security Risks.
Immense databases, such as are being proposed by TIA - whether operated by
governmental or commercial organizations - represent substantial security
and privacy risks in their own right.  An all-encompassing database,
compiled from private and governmental databases including financial,
medical, educational, telephone, and travel records, will contain large
quantities of sensitive information.  One or more such databases would
provide new targets for exploitation and attack by malicious computer users,
criminals, and terrorists.  It is unlikely that sufficiently robust
databases of the required size and complexity, whether centralized or
distributed, can be constructed, financed, and effectively employed in a
secure environment, even with significant research advances.  A single
individual who has a personal or political vendetta, or who has been
compromised by blackmail or greed, could do great harm.  Yet, tens of
thousands of systems administrators, domestic law enforcement staff, and
intelligence personnel will be able to access the data; the security of the
data will depend on the trustworthiness of every one of them.  This is not
something that can be guaranteed with technology.

The databases proposed by TIA also would increase the risk of identity theft
by providing a wealth of personal information to anyone accessing the
databases.  A recent case of massive identity theft involved a computer
help-desk employee who abused his access to sensitive passwords from banks
and credit companies to obtain personal information on over 30,000 people
over a period of three years.  The employee then sold the personal
information to a number of scam artists.  Imagine how much more damage could
be done with a database as comprehensive as that envisioned by those who
support the TIA.  Imagine how effective a terrorist organization could be if
it could use those to pass themselves off as trustworthy citizens who hold
security clearances.

Privacy Risks.
Privacy is a fundamental American value.  Fair Information Practices were
developed because policymakers recognized that there are critical issues of
privacy when aggregating data that was collected for other purposes.  First
formulated by a Department of Health, Education and Welfare committee in
1973, the Code of Fair Information Practices is the foundation for the
federal Privacy Act of 1974 and the privacy laws of the country.  It
prohibits secret databases and mandates fairness, accountability, and due
process for individuals about whom information is gathered.  The need for
oversight and control is especially great when aggregation and analysis of
personal information is done without the knowledge or consent of the people
being monitored.

It is misleading to suggest that "privacy enhancing technologies" within TIA
can protect people's privacy, because by definition surveillance compromises
privacy.  Furthermore, the secrecy inherent in TIA implies that citizens
could not verify that information about them is accurate and shielded from
misuse.  Worse yet would be the resulting lack of protection against
harassment or blackmail by individuals who have inappropriately obtained
access to an individual's information, or by government agencies
that misuse their authority.  Again, these are concerns that cannot be
completely addressed, even with advances in technology.

Economic Risks.
The success of electronic commerce in the U.S. may be threatened by TIA.
Independent research has repeatedly shown that ensuring confidence in
privacy preservation is fundamental to the continued growth of electronic
commerce, a technology in which the U.S. is preeminent and on which a
significant part of our future economic growth depends.  In addition, as
most non-Americans would oppose allowing the U.S. government to access
private information about them, we could expect the development of
e-commerce systems that exclude the U.S., thereby depriving American
companies of significant export opportunities.  For example, a European
Union subsidiary of a U.S. based e-commerce company might be forbidden from
running the company's systems in the EU because of the EU's Data Privacy
Directive.  Alternatively, if privacy restrictions elsewhere in the world
conflict with TIA-inspired surveillance, companies may be forced to develop
and operate expensive, parallel systems of record-keeping for non-U.S.
customers.

Finally, the cost of identity theft to businesses, government, and victims
is significant and increasing.  National bank regulators approximated half a
million cases of identity theft a year.  Costs due to identity theft are
currently estimated to be in the billions of dollars.  Not only will all
these stolen identities introduce "noise" into the TIA database, the
potential for more significant theft via this aggregated database system
could greatly magnify the total costs to citizens, businesses, and
government.

Personal Risks.
Because TIA would combine some types of automated data-mining with
statistical analysis, there would be a significant personal cost for many
Americans.  Any type of statistical analysis inevitably results in some
number of false positives - in this case incorrectly labeling someone as a
potential terrorist.  As the entire population would be subjected to TIA
surveillance, even a small percentage of false positives would result
in a large number of law-abiding Americans being mistakenly labeled.

For example, suppose the system has an 99.9% accuracy rate.  We believe that
having only 0.1% of records being misclassified as belonging to potential
terrorists would be an unachievable goal in practice.  However, if records
for everyone in the U.S. were processed monthly, even this unlikely low rate
of false positives could result in as many as 3 million citizens being
wrongly identified each year.  More realistic assumptions about the
percentage of false positives would drive the number even higher.  Research
to increase accuracy and eliminate false positives in such systems is
clearly worthwhile, but the rate can never be reduced to zero while
maintaining some functionality.  Is any level of false positive acceptable -
and Constitutional - in such a system?

The existence of TIA would impact the behavior of both real terrorists and
law abiding individuals.  Real terrorists are likely to go to great lengths
to make certain that their behavior is statistically "normal," and ordinary
people are likely to avoid perfectly lawful behavior out of fear of being
labeled "Un-American."

To summarize, we appreciate that the stated goal of TIA is to fund research
into new technologies and algorithms that could be used in a large
surveillance system in the service of eliminating terrorist acts.  However,
we are extremely concerned that the program has been initiated and some
projects already funded apparently without independent oversight and without
sufficient thought being given to real constraints - technical, legal,
economic, and ethical - on project scope, development, field testing,
deployment, and use.  Consequently, the deployment of TIA, as we currently
understand it, would create new risks while having an unknown effect on
overall security.

There are important steps that the government can take now to increase our
security without creating a massive surveillance program that has the
potential of doing more harm than good.  Federal, state and local
governments already have information systems in place that could play major
roles with highly focused "terrorist spotting".  However, many of these
information systems are only partly functional and/or being ineffectively
used.  An example is the computer system run by the Federal Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms which, according to the New York Times, was
unable to link bullets fired in three sniper shootings in Maryland and
Georgia in September, 2002.  Serious improvements in the use of current
operational systems could significantly enhance homeland security without
creating the major new risks noted in this letter.  We would be very pleased
to assist policymakers in those efforts, especially as they relate to
reducing the risk of attacks on our information infrastructure.

Please contact the ACM Office of Public Policy Office at (202) 478-6312 if
we can be of assistance.

Sincerely,

Barbara Simons, Ph.D.
Eugene H. Spafford, Ph.D.

Co-Chairs
U.S. ACM Public Policy Committee (USACM)
Association for Computing Machinery


About USACM:
USACM is the U.S. Public Policy Committee of the Association for Computing
Machinery (ACM).  ACM is the leading nonprofit membership organization of
computer scientists and information technology professionals dedicated to
advancing the art, science, engineering and application of information
technology.  Since 1947, ACM has been a pioneering force in fostering the
open interchange of information and promoting both technical and ethical
excellence in computing. Over 70,000 computer scientists and information
technology professionals from around the world are members of ACM.




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                         John F. McMullen
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