TIA Preview: Here's Lookin' At You

cosmosis points to this interesting glimpse presented on Cryptome at ways in which the proposed "Total Information Awareness" system currently being touted as a way to fight terrorism could be abused. It's also a reminder that there's plenty of possibly sensitive information on you and your neighbors that's floating out there already.

Comments

i've talked about this

[vsync64]

I've written about this in varying detail on my Web site. Here's an excerpt from one of the more pertinent entries:

I'm hoping to tie this rambling into a coherent conclusion. I've had people tell me that it doesn't matter what data collection is being undertaken by the government; if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. If my slowing down for a stopped vehicle is suspicious enough to warrant following, what happens when they have a list of the books I read, the sites I visit on the Internet, and the people I send mail to (even if I use PGP, you think there aren't honeypot remailers out there?)?

Howard Rheingold pointed out on the radio the other night that once all this data is collected (note that They doesn't have to gather the information, just collect it from private companies), the potential for data mining is enormous. What happens when whatever AI and heuristics they have scanning our lives flags a particular coincidence, and the person writing the report is lazy or is ideologically prejudiced? Remember, once it's typed up in a report with a nice abstract by someone told by the computer that you're "suspicious", things look a lot more airtight than they are.

Do you want the police crashing your door, cursing and beating you, and kicking in your teeth, because of a red-flagged coincidence? Do you want to die in a shootout defending your family based on a misunderstanding, bad spin, or a lie? And don't forget, Bush's Justice Department now wants to be able to force you to incriminate yourself.

Civillian government

[Wesley Everest]

Think about this one... We are talking about giving the U.S. military the ability to spy on U.S. citizens. It might not seem like a big deal -- sure, there are civil-liberties and privacy issues, but a lot of people don't care about that because they feel they have nothing to hide.

But there is a good reason that the military has specifically not been allowed to spy on U.S. citizens. In fact, this is a fundamental property of all civillian governments.

So, what's the problem? All political candidates in the U.S. are going to be included in this wide net. Let's say you have two candidates in a close race, one who is for a larger military budget and less civillian oversight of the military -- the other is for a smaller military budget and more civillian oversight. What is to prevent this program from being used to find dirt on one candidate and giving it to the other, or otherwise using it to create enough of a scandal to tip the election.

But nobody would ever do that! That would be unethical and illegal. We've only had one president in the past 30 years caught for similar behavior. Just because Poindexter was found guilty of covering up a scheme to sell weapons to our enemy (Iran) to fund terrorists that congress specifically outlawed funding to (the contras in Nicargua), that doesn't mean he'd do something as unethical as influencing an election to get more funding and less oversight. Naaah.

Planes crash all the time, many thousands die every year from all sorts of accidents and violence. Civillian governments removing checks on their military is a rare occurance, and ultimately leads to much more death and destruction than Bin Laden could ever dream of.

Or, to really drive it home for the slashdot crowd -- military dictatorships often outlaw pr0n!