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.
[...]
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Received on Dec 16 2002
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