more on EFF: American Travelers to Get Secret 'Risk Assessment' Scores

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Adam Fields <ip20398470293845 () aquick org>
Date: December 1, 2006 3:10:14 PM EST
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Cc: ip () v2 listbox com
Subject: Re: [IP] EFF: American Travelers to Get Secret 'Risk  
Assessment' Scores

For IP, if you wish:

On Thu, Nov 30, 2006 at 05:31:29PM -0500, David Farber wrote:
[...]
> "The government is preparing to give millions of
> law-abiding citizens 'risk assessment' scores that will
> follow them throughout their lives," said EFF Senior
> Counsel David Sobel.  "If that wasn't frightening enough,
> none of us will have the ability to know our own score, or
> to challenge it.  Homeland Security needs to delay the
> deployment of this system and allow for an informed public
> debate on this dangerous proposal."
[...]


Suppose that someone is flagged by the system and that person is
actually a dangerous criminal. What's the right response? Simply don't
let them board the plane? Additional searching? Arrest them? Nowhere
have I heard a discussion of what should happen here. Ideally, I'd
assume, a senior enough law enforcement official would be at the scene
in order to make a real decision about what should be done. Of course,
such a senior person would also have the authority to say "Oh, wait,
this is a false positive. The system has identified someone who isn't
a threat.".

And there's the rub - these two go hand in hand. Without the ability
to weed out the false positives, the system is also guaranteed to fail
to deal with a real threat. Making it easy for innocent people to
clear themselves is critical to having the system work at all. It's
not enough to identify the suspected threats - you have to eventually
identify the real ones.

--
                                - Adam

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