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Defense Department 'eDNA' Plan Withdrawn
An anonymous reader points out this report on News.com from Declan McCullagh of a far-reaching plan (now withdrawn) to curtail much online privacy through the use of biometric markers, excerpting "The idea involved creating secure areas of the Internet that could be accessed only if a user had such a marker, called eDNA, according to a report in Friday's New York Times." Perhaps they'll withdraw the plan to track everything you buy next. Update: 11/24 17:38 GMT by T : Here is the original New York Times report from John Markoff.
So be careful about the DoD. Just because they draw one of their insidious plans back into their black helicopter doesn't mean there's one of the fuckers right behind you ready to steal your precious radioactive bodily fluids for further study.
You must remain constantly vigilant. I have not slept in 4 weeks, and neither should you, if you knew what they were up to!
--sdem
I think I'm going to print out copies of a story about this, or the Total Information Awareness plan, or the USA Patriot act, for when people ask me, "Why in the world did you join the ACLU?". Previously I've answered that by telling them that I didn't want a state-imposed religion, but many christians don't see a problem with that.
The DARPA web site http://www.darpa.mil/iao/ spells out their mission, including things like "Story telling, change detection, and truth maintenance". Check out their logo, it looks like something from a James Bond movie.
I think we are so close to all of this right now, that we really won't know the impacts of technology on society and our governments ability to "control" it.
I truly think we are on a verge of some sort of revelution and one side will win. It is hard to tell which one it is. Either it is freedom of information (which inheritatly includes some anarchy) or a Orwellian controlled society that is something out of a sci-fi book.
What I don't think that we realize right now, is that we are on the threshold of that. Will our grandchildren look back at the DCMA and say "that was the start of it all". Who knows. In my gut, I feel that the DCMA, the dawn of the second millenium after Christ, is a defining moment in who we are as a species.
Fear and paranioia feed one side, and the desire to be free and uncontrolled feed the other. Who will win? Will open journalism keep us free, providing a double check on our governments, or will our freedoms be etched away, until we are left with nothing, comfortable in our little cage, none the wiser. Will information and freedom be nothing more than a commodity sold and developed by Microsoft? What does the future hold?
Opinions and comments welcome...
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
Apparently SRI is the group who got paid $60k to have this workshop on creating eDNA and the idea was widely (and it sounds like pretty communally) denounced and essentially rejected as technically unworkable (problem-laden) not to mention problematic w.r.t. privacy issues.
Also, apparently there was a huge flame war over how to present the group's findings. The individual initially charged with this ended up being relieved (gratefully, I'm sure) of these duties. Gee, ya think it was because the people gathered together felt *the most* strongly about the total lack of privacy aspect of this? I am inclined to think this was most definitely the case.
Anyway, this all is a problem; so what, it won't be eDNA - but only because they couldn't (at this time) get the job done!
I also find it ironic that the name of this program was pitched as "eDNA" - the reason this made me smile but very wearily is that I keep lobbying against TIA and its assorted ramifications ------ and one of the arguments I use is that as soon as (a) our DNA can be cheaply decoded (it currently can be decoded by Craig Venter) && (b) the information decoded actually means something (i.e. there is still a ton of speculative work into which diseases each of the proteins correlates to and to what degree etc.) you gotta believe that your little double helix's meaning is going to be hard coded along with every snarky e-mail you ever sent, every time you laid yourself out on the line in an e-mail, every purchase you made, when you made it, what it was, what your medical - ENTIRE medical - history is etc. etc. etc.
To a previous poster: don't worry, son; I also am not sleeping. . .
Those who give up their power willingly deserve none.
how about we know everything the government does, then i'll tell them everything i do. sound fair?
The idea involved creating secure areas of the Internet that could be accessed only if a user had such a marker, called eDNA, according to a report in Friday's New York Times
And how, exactly, is this *really* much better than creating secure areas of the Internet that can be accessed only if the user has a DRM-safe implementation of Palladium (which will probably only cover the base microsoft implementation)?
Okay, so your copy of Windows Leghorn can't be traced back to you specifically, in that it doesn't go back to your biometrics or whatever. But if you've used at least one e-commerce site with a dodgy privacy policy, it can probably be traced back to your credit card, which means it can be traced back to your mailing address.. which means, well, whatever it means if your mailing address is being sold to random companies along with sites you frequently visit.
Palladium does contain a unique id for each copy of the software implementing it, right? If not, i apologize for my tyrade, but still, am i the only one pissed off by the idea of cordoned-off sections of the internet you can only access if you follow their ultra-specific rules of running specific software, whether that's software that limits how you can reuse bits on your hard drive or software that ensures you're sending out biometric data with your internet connections..
What? You mean Gattaca didn't drive everyone away from this idea already?
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Does anyone ever think back to our roots, and realize that maybe it's time for another American Revolution?
Correct me if I'm wrong (always a dangerous thing to say, I know) -- but don't we already have numerous records about us that we're not "allowed" to see? Would this not be yet another, much more comprehensive "protected document"? And if we don't get to read it, we can't clear up any misunderstandings. It all becomes allegation. That's a very dangerous recipe.
I used to think that the gradual shift to an all-credit society would have its benefits (harder to rob your local convenience store of e-dollars... though, wait, it's coming). As time goes on, however, I'm starting to think that there may be benefit, even salvation, in being able to slip through the cracks. Just because I trust my present elected reps (or think them too stupid to do too much harm) doesn't mean the next set is going to be more brilliant, more misguided, and more dangerous than ever. Policies end up staying in place even though the faces running them change. Let's be damn careful what we set in motion.
As long as the supreme court upholds this judgement, we have some small hope.
Brevity is the soul of wit
-- Polonius
This is a classic political tactic: when you find that you've gone too far on something, throw out a strawman that's even more extreme and oppose it, thereby putting yourself in a manufactured moderate position.
Keep your eye on the ball, folks.
Of course this whole Government DNA collection sounds scary, but they have been doing it to thier military members for years now. They take a sample of every members DNA and other Biometric information and keep it stored in a large database. It is considered the new high tech dog-tags. I don't like the idea of them wanting to do this to the general public though. We alread use the Biometric system to identify members who have lost thier ID or need to log on to a workstation.
[n8.r0n] http://petesweb.spymac.net/
As much as I am pro freedom and privacy, and hate the power of the state and big corporations like a good leftish boy, there are good reasons to have some kind of identification on the 'net... No CC fraud, less spam (accountability for one's actions), and a definate way to prove who you are.
If it's implemented in a way that I can decide to use this identification, when, where, and how I want, without any possibility of being forced to do so, there is no privacy problem. If you don't want to give the information, you don't. If you need to do it, you can.
The internet could use a way to identify people for who they really are; as long as it's not mandatory or enforcible, it's only a positive thing, in my eyes.
You see, when you buy something with a credit card, or when you just really want to prove to someone who you are, you _want_ to give some information already. There is no privacy issue, since you want the information to be known; you can just back it up with proof.
It could be used as an optional extra check to avoid CC fraud, for instance.
Maybe it's time we blow of the dust of the (e.g.) pgp protocol, and try to find a way to make a official central directory in which we can be sure anybody is who he claims to be. If you don't want to use it and remain anonymous, you don't have to. It's all about choice.
I wonder why PGP isn't more popular.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This sort of tracking scheme isn't just an invasion of privacy. If every step isn't completely secure, it can be a risk to anyone whose job or lifestyle can put them in some nut's sights. If such a scheme has leaks, online activities could potentially be tracked not only for private citizens, but ALSO for law enforcement personnel. It could make the entire net fatally unsafe for anyone in a witness protection program. It could be used by stalkers and vigilantes. Etc.
Yeah, maybe that sounds paranoid, but this wouldn't be much different from using your SSN to identify yourself to every server you talk to. How long before it's compromised?? Do you trust every server to keep its logs 100% secure from prying eyes? It's 10pm.. do you know where your identity is??
BTW some years ago a similar universal tracking scheme was proposed for (IIRC) private phone calls, and that was shot down by the FBI as being too potentially-hazardous to the lives of field agents.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Hmmm I agree with a previous poster that you're a wee bit paranoid, but hey what do we all come to slashdot for?
/. that you can post that article without getting modded 'offtopic', its called your journal and it can come in real handy for articles such as this. Click the link I gave you, put your article there and link it in your sig.
You know there is this great little place on
The Anti-Blog
I fully expect to see this come up again. It seems more and more they are pushing the limits as to how many of our civil right they can take away. Depending on how many of their constitutants they can placate, they progress or retract operations. It's been done for years, ex. Prohibition. They took away a right, People bitched and yelled and creamed and flat out broke the law to the point they gave the right back and dubbed prohibition "The noble experiment". What's so noble about stripping our rights away?
All ranting aside, we need to put a stop to the theory of "Let's see which rights we can take away" and more "Let's see what rights we can protect". In examples such as this don't be satisfied with the fact that they withdrew the plan, let them know how disgusted you are it was ever conceived in the first place.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
Look, now that the government has been stealing people's organs for a while, it's clear that there's a lot of money to be made.
The department of energy closed down their online scientific resources to avoid competing with the private sector, so DARPA should follow suit and stop harvesting people for their organs.
It is unfair for entrepeneurs such as myself, who kidnap people and evicerate them to support my drug habit^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfamily, to have to compete with publically funded organ harvesters and traders. These are services that could be more profitably^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hefficiently provided by the private sector. Think of how many of your tax dollars are WASTED stealing organs for local government officials, when those same tax dollars could be apportioned to local government, and then used constructively to buy me a new mercedes.
Remember - when I steal your organs and sell them to the highest bidder, the consumer wins.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Not to sound like some Noam Chomsky article... The "enemies of freedom" line is political scape-goatism supported by a massive failure of the 4th Estate. CNN is not doing us any favours by pounding home the message that *we* are the only victims.
The politicians and media have been telling us about our moral superiority for so long that we've effectively lost the ability to see ourselves as the rest of the world sees us. The United States of America and its western allies have propped up as many puppet dictators as they have shut down, and certainly started more wars than they have ended. We look at people like Noriega, Marcos, the Iran-Contra affair, bin Laden, etc. as isolated disasters instead of seeing them as eggs in the same US-made crate.
I'm not suggesting that driving airplanes into buildings is excusable by any stretch of the imagination. What really scares me, though, is not the next terrorist act but the fact that people don't see (or refuse to acknowledge) the cause-effect relationship at play here. As long as the 1st World governments are abusing 3rd World nations there will always be those who have the means and desire to fight back.
The best way to keep the "enemies of freedom" from hiding behind legal or technological walls is to stop manufacturing these enemies of freedom. Perhaps the Canadian diplomat's "moron" comment wasn't so far off base.
ll: bye, Karma. It's been nice knowing you.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Indeed -- and if I can win the lottery I will have no financial problems. These are nice things to fantasize about, but they're not wise to plan on when the odds are so fundamentally against them happening.
Remember, the Social Security Number in the US was originally supposed to be only for the purposes of administering Social Security. Now it is "mandatory" for a wide range of things including just having a place to live (e.g., as part of an application for an apartment, a mortgage, etc.). When I was growing up (and I'm only in my 30s so this isn't ancient history!), I didn't need an SSN until I was ready to get a job. We applied for them as part of a 9th grade class; none of my fellow students had one. Scant decades later, my children were required to have an SSN application submitted almost immediately upon birth.
Maybe it's time we blow of the dust of the (e.g.) pgp protocol, and try to find a way to make a official central directory in which we can be sure anybody is who he claims to be.
You mean, like a keyserver?
I wonder why PGP isn't more popular.
Probably because "average" people don't understand it and the principles of trust surrounding it. Nor do they want to learn, because, as Thomas Edison put it, "Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think."
No Laughing Allowed!
Links to the original NY Times article and Slashdot thread that discussed another initiative out of this agency. Declan McCullagh's was a follow-up as he mentioned in his piece.
The NY Times tells us that DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the same agency that wants to create a massive cross-domain transaction database, also proposed what it called eDNA: '...tagging Internet data with unique personal markers to make anonymous use of some parts of the Internet impossible.' Slashdotter Declan McCullagh followed up on the NYT piece with his article on MSNBC.
Quote: "We were intrigued by the difficult computing science research involved in creating network capabilities that would provide the same level of accountability in cyberspace that we now have in the physical world," spokeswoman Jan Walker said in a telephone interview.
:-
"the same level of accountability"
Makes it all sound perfectly reasonable - doesn't it?
Do they currently keep records of everything that you touch in the physical world to ananalyse? - so is that the same level of accountability?
They wish to tag you like some sex offender - or an animal - would any person of intelligence call that accountability?
When will people realize that the Total Information Awareness plan / USA Patriot act are all bull* propaganda?
Like I stated many times
Ask Security Services in the US, UK or Indonesia (Bali) to deny this:
Internet surveillance, using Echelon, Carnivore or back doors in encryption, will not stop terrorists communicating by other means - most especially face to face or personal courier.
Terrorists will have to do that, or they will be caught
Perhaps using mobile when absolutely essential, saying - "Meet you in the pub Monday" (human bomb to target A), or Tuesday (target B) or Sunday (abort).
The Internet has become a tool for government to snoop on their people - 24/7.
The terrorism argument is a dummy - total bull*.
INTERNET SURVEILLANCE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO STOP TERRORISTS - THAT IS SPIN AND PROPAGANDA
This propaganda is for several reasons, including: a) making you feel safer b) to say the government are doing something and c) the more malicious motive of privacy invasion.
Government say about surveillance - "you've nothing to fear - if you are not breaking the law"
This argument is made to pressure people into acquiescence - else appear guilty of hiding something illegal.
It does not address the real reason why they want this information (which they will deny) - they want a surveillance society.
They wish to invade your basic human right to privacy. This is like having somebody watching everything you do - all your personal thoughts, hopes and fears will be open to them.
This is everything - including phone calls and interactive TV. Quote from CNET: "Whether you're just accessing a Web site, placing a phone call, watching TV or developing a Web service, sometime in the not to distant future, virtually all such transactions will converge around Internet protocols."
"Why should I worry? I do not care if they know what I do in my own home", you may foolishly say. This information will be held about you until the authorities need it for anything at all. Like, for example, here in UK when they checked individuals of Paddington crash survivors group. The group was lead by badly injured Pam Warren - whom they arrogantly presume would not worry about having her privacy invaded.
All your finances for them to scrutinize; heaven help you if you cannot account for every cent when they check on your taxes.
Do not believe the lies of Government - even more of your money spent on these measures will not protect us from terrorists. Every argument they use is subterfuge - pure spin.