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Tech's Answer To Big Brotherism
StCredZero writes "Along the same lines as the earlier article about Poindexter's info being posted, C|Net has an interesting editorial by Declan McCullagh on how to protect our personal information from unauthorized snooping by the authorities, yet let them have a database for tracking down terrorists. McCullagh's solution is based on algorithms developed for Digital Cash."
Your talking about an agency which tried to get a backdoor placed into Phil Zimmermann's PGP. Even if they did try to protect the information, there is not way they would do anything which would impede their ability to extract every bit on just a whim. 'Encrypting the data' would just be a PR stunt.
...yet let them have a database for tracking down terrorists...
let them have it? since when have we have any say on what the authorities can or can't do?
The article could have been summed up in one sentence: the best way to protect yourself is to buy everything with untraceable methods like cash or money orders, and limit your recorded transactions to things like land. Oh, and don't take out any loans either, or buy anything online, or fill out a census form. In other words, all the progress of the 20th century will be reduced to us paying cash at the local general store like in the 1950s because we can't trust our government. If ordinary people can avoid the new system, how hard will it be for terrorists? Thanks a lot, Uncle Sam.
Yeah, that's what it's for; tracking terrorists. The FBI just needs to read their own memos from their own agents to track down these terrorists. Why doesn't anyone ask that question? Do we really need to give up our privacy and freedom simply because the FBI isn't processing the information that is readily available to them?
Aside from the memo sent out by their own agent, I can promise you there was way more information available to the FBI prior to 9/11 that should have made them take notice. Taking into account that they had the information prior to 9/11 before everyone was shitting in their pants about terrorism it's no wonder they didn't do anything.
We are such reactionists. We got hit by terrorists, now lets shred the constitution and live under Marshall law and military rule until we stop shitting ourselves.
I don't believe we need a Dept. of Homeland Defence or any of that shit. The FBI and CIA need to read their fucking email and act on the information they have. Or did they have the information and we told not to act on it? I wonder.
LoRider
The thought that many people consider, like this article, that Big Brother was just the government watching everything you do really goes to show the author probably never read the book. Big Brother is much more than monitoring...actually the monitoring plays a very minor role.
Big Brother's scariest tactic was the use of DoubleThink - and it's rampant today. DoubleThink meant you could see something one way, but you would willingly force yourself and thereby *believe* the opposite to be true, if the government requested it of you. In the book by George Orwell this was common regarding rations of chocolate, war with Eurasia or Eastasia, etc.
In today's society it's Nike saying they free people to achieve their dreams while running sweatshops in Asia. It's McDonalds saying "My McDonalds" when really they're the ones dictating what I can and cannot eat. Its the Gap saying "People of the world, join hands" in their newest commercial while they're, once again, utilizing sweatshops in Asia. Its Microsoft saying "Where do you want to go today" while basically saying "This is where we're going to take you today".
Big Brother is not just monitoring - it's an entire way a society thinks. Sure, prevent people from possibly taking over your data, but I believe that should be the least of your concerns. The first priority should be to stop people from taking over your mind.
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
Detectives will tell you the reason a lot of criminals get caught is because they have this attitude. Or they think they're too smart - that no one would ever bother to Luminol the inside of their car...
So what happens when something you've done, something you thought - becomes illegal? And what happens when they do have the time and the means? Will you just hand it to them?
Call me paranoid, fearful, whatever - but I'd rather put up a fight.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
Think again. The idea is to locate suspicious activity. Not using credit card is the first trigger to show that you are a potential terrorist, - other triggers follow.
Ok...and Clinton is the root of all evil because of a blowjob?
-- Insert wisdom here:
Yes one way databases could work. They can be fast, accurate, reliable and secure.
But there are a few reasons why I don't see it happening.
1. Linking transactions together is seen as valuable to those tracking data. The grocery store would love to know that I buy Doritos every day, and that I just moved so they should order fewer Doritos.
2. People don't understand this technology. Since we can't read who did what, how can we really track what is going on, how can we be sure that only paying customers get service. They don't understand so they don't trust. Complicated solutions like this are new, and implementations are seen as generally troublesome. I wouldn't bet my company on it, and the current crop of mangers won't either.
3. Not enough pressure from customers. Why go for this complicated, expensive risky new technology that is less useful to us when our customers don't even care about it.
I think it is mostly a perception and Cost/Benefit problem.
*throwing hands into the air*
I have to admit, it's probably me. As I understand it, the article points out that there exist designs for data-collection and data-mining that would allow non-disclosure of personal information. True, the public/business could use these designs when constructing data-collection systems.
However, posters have rightly pointed out that mandates to "all your data belong to us" by the Gvt will probably either explicitly cover the case "you must be able to turn over all your data, don't design it otherwise", or they will implicitly cover the case "failure turn over all the data will result in a fine". Almost certainly, the second statement is easier for the voting public to accept than the first. In either case, the same result obtains: The designs utilized will be the easiest ones, the ones in use today, and those are the ones that provide simple, bi-directional links between John Doe and his pr0n/weapons/libertarian-prose purchasing behavior.
Surely, it is in some sense more seemly to collect the minimal data required, and to store it in such a way that the system itself maintains user privacy quite aside from the database's access permissions; however, in light of the technology barriers (it's _harder_ to implement such a system, and harder during the classically shorted design phase), and the possible future legislative barriers, it seems unlikely in the extreme that these protections will make it into most systems of this kind.
At the root, our loss of privacy protections is a societal/legal matter. Slashdot maintains firmly that piracy issues (societal/behavioral matter) can't be solved by technology (DRM), don't be so quick to embrace the thought that privacy protection could possibly be so solved.
Although corporate databases CAN be made to hinder or thwart gathering personal information, WHY would said corporations bother to implement this?
To reduce liability and to avoid adverse publicity, in the event the database is compromised. Sensitive databases have been compromised before, and will be again. The potential damage is limited if the data is encrypted in the database. Corporations don't care about our privacy, but they certainly do care about liability and adverse publicity! (A PR campaign doesn't provide those benefits, only the illusion of them...)
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
In the past years, technocrats, maketroids and burocrats of all kinds have had their wet dreams about the global database and total information about their victims.
In the beginning, those databases will probably work and be a menace to our privacy, but as they're fed on a constant stream of uncaring data input, random garbage, errors, the quality of the data will deteriorate quickly. Just have a look at the Times registration database (are there really that many Mr. Goatse?) or the mailing list from the wonderful Real-Media Player download page.
Once this stage is reached, the conclusions of those databases will get discounted more and more, and transparent anonymity will be reached. People will simple learn how to feed the system on the crap it likes best. We have that already today in accounting (just keep below the radar of the IRS) and other offical reporting duties. The trend will just continue.
In the end, any query will produce a lot of chaff while missing much important data that they won't be worth the the processing time.
The idea that those databases can be used to combat Terrorism and crime is quite ludicrous. I'm certain Mss. Nasty and Dr. Evil will manage to have completely harmless profiles in all of those databases. At worst, it will just give those criminals with access to power an additional leverage (see current Mafia-trials in Italy).
At the moment we're in atransitional phase, where people still believe in Big Brother, and those poor sods having their data in the wrong place will suffer most. Anybody who got associated with somebody else's credit record can attest that.
But once enough people are made to suffer from the garbage produced by those databases, things will normalise again.
We just need more databases, more agressive datamining, leading to more mistakes. The bigger the mistakes, the merrier. If those reports hit the evening news often enough, the systems will find their rightful destiny:
A big garbage dump for burocraties to wank over.
You've got to be kidding. When the authorities come to debate the issue with you, what, exactly, are you going to do? Shoot some cop, soldier, or CTU agent? Some guy with a job to do, and maybe a family, or a dog, or whatever back home waiting for him?
Then what? The authorities are going to back down and let you keep whatever rights they were planning to take away from you? Please.
If you're lucky, you'll get that grunt's commander in your sights before they gun you down, but it's not like he sets policy either. Or maybe you're betting that once the SWAT team figures out that the job involves getting shot at, they'll call the whole thing off.
Of course, if you get enough citizens armed and ready to fight, you might have some impact--the exact same impact a large number of citizens would have if they engaged in peacful noncompliance.
Would people get shot during a nonviolent protest? Probably. Would people get shot during a violent protest? Most definitely. So where's the benefit to your solution?
If the SWAT team does desert, it won't be because you're shooting at them--it'll be because they've heard a lot of reasonable debate on the subject, and you position makes much more sense to them than the other guy's. So there they are, teetering between their responsibility to their employer and their growing conviction that their employer is wrong. They're having second thoughts about this whole raid. Maybe you're a nice guy, they're thinking. Maybe you have a good point. Maybe taking you down would be the wrong thing to do. Maybe it's time to take a stand and make a change.
And then you start shooting at them. Nice going, Einstein. Now you, and your family, and your dog, and your mp3 collection--gassed, and firebombed, and mercilessly slaughtered. And the media will carry the story of another crazy gun nut getting shut down before he could endanger innocent lives.
Of course, if you don't think your arguments could make a change, or you don't relish joining thousands of other dissenters in prison for your beliefs, or you've seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid one too many times, then maybe going out in a violent, bloody, and futile blaze of glory might seem pretty appealing. It's certainly more cinematic than sitting in prison for a couple decades, like Nelson Mandela. Certainly more heroic than traveling the countryside, educating citizens with your example of passive resitance, like Gandhi. Congratulations! Vin Diesel will star in the MTV movie of your extreme rebellion.
What do your "votes" have to offer that peaceful protest does not, except more dead people and less calm discussion?
By all means, excercise your rights! Keep those guns, enjoy them. But if you think they're going to help you make a difference during some armed rebellion, you may want to consider moving to the United States of Some Parallel Universe. I hear that there, the 2nd Amendment guarantees everybody's right to own a main battle tank, a joint strike fighter, mechanized artillery, a recon satellite, and a cruise missile.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
to the bravest of the past. *cheers*
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
This database thats been proposed relies on certain common identifers to be able to track people. Ask anyone who has ever worked on a large database - with out a common id tracking system, you can never find anything.
I'm guessing that there will be two different id tracking methods: Social Security Number and Alien Registration ID.
This is why this database is not about tracking terrorists. Terrorists, you see, don't like to be tracked. They can sneak into the country off a container ship thats passing near the coast. They can sneak in via the Mexico or Canada borders.
Terrorists don't like leaving paper trails especially if something they are planning will take an age to achieve, so they pay with everything in cash (either stolen or given to them by fine upstanding, but sympathetic citizens).
ID theft is so easy in the US these days it's not even funny, and nobody has taken any steps to correct it. If the current administration was serious about clamping down on terrorists they would first make the current system so foolproof that ID theft was impossible - then track people.
Take this example:
John Q Nobody is a foreign terrorist whose goal is to attack the US Capitol Building
He sneaks off a ship somewhere off the coast of California and meets up on shore with Peter D Alias, second generation immigrant who feels strongly about US intrests. He'd recieved a call from a mentor to meet someone on the beach, and give him a package because he had to be out of town that weekend. Peter meets him and gives him package containing a stolen SSN and papers that identify John as Jack Y American. Peter also gives him a large sum of cash and a legally registered car to use.
John/Jack uses the money to buy several batches of chemicals in different states. After 2 weeks he meets up with Joe P Somebody, a disaffected American who one vistied the country that John/Jack comes from and hates the fact that the US bombed it into the stoneage several years ago. He's been talking with a friend from that country who sends him a parcel that another friend will pick up. He meets John/Jack and given him the parcel containing the stolen SSN and a birth certificate of a dead infant. John/Jack assumes the identity of the dead infant and is becomes William Stonewall of Minnesota.
As John/William he now buys several more batches of chemicals in a few more states, and drives to DC. There he combines the chemicals sticks it in some plumbing supplies bought at Lowes and mortars the US Capitol building.
He then meets up in DC with a contact from an embassy and recieves a passport made up with a valid identity. He drives to Canada and flies off to his home country.
The OHS starts investigating, and finds that a gang of 3-4 people were involved and worked as a team to do this, little realising it was one guy and he's long since left. After several months they find that the ID's were stolen.
All that will be left is some grainy security tape footage of some guy that was never in the system in the first place.
Whats sad is that because ID's were stolen it was never flagged that this attack was being planned...
You are absolutley right.
And I think educating people on what to demand from their bank would go a long way towards solving things.
If you walk into a bank knowing the rules of the game, and how things work, you can usually get things done quickly.. even if you have to be a bit forthright to cut through their scripted crap.
I found my bank account empty one day.. I asked at the bank, they told me it was a cheque that had been cashed. Sure enough, account activity shoed a check of some strange amount (not a roun dfigure) being withdrawn.. coincidentally, the time on the transaction was the same as the time on the previos trnasaction, which was me depositing a cheque for the exact same amount.
Now, I made that deposit. but I certainly didn't cash a cheque for the same amount at the same time.
So.. I asked the lady "Okay... two points. Firstly, you must agree it looks a bit strange. Secondly, I didn't write a cheque; every single cheque I have is in my briefcase, right here (I showed her). She continued to insist.
I asked "Okay, can I see the cheque then, please? Where was it cashed, who's signature is on it? A faxed copy will be sufficient.. just show me this cheque that I know doesn't exist."
"No sir, we don't have those, those are in another city, where things are processed."
Eventually she got the branch manager. I explained simply "I *know* I didn't write this cheque, I have all my cheques. I am now broke because your bank made an error. You can't show me the cheque, and you aren't helping me. I want you to either show me a copy of the cheque that supposedly was written, or put the money back in my account & reverse all the overdraft charges by the end of the day"
"Of course sir, that's completely reasonable. I'll call you at your office before we close"
Just when I thought the bank had forgotten, it was a half hour since they closed, my phone rang, it was the branch manager. He apologized, said everything had been reversed and credited, and that their clerk had made an entry error when depositing my cheque a few days ago.
Now.. it struck me as odd. This isn't a lot of money.. they weren't overly evil.. but the clerk definately wanted me to go away because it was *obviously* my fault, and the bank couldn't have made an error. There's no reason for this hostility.. or wanting me to leave.. just give me straight, polite answers.
I think if the average person understood a bit more about what a bank is, how it operates, and what services it should be providing, banks would quickly get better.
The thing about cashing cheques really amazes me.. I had the same thing happen at HKBC... payroll cheques, issued from that branch. They would actually ask me rudely if I hda an account, glare at me, etcetera... they really acted like they did not want to honor the cheque.
You have to understand how bank employees work... they ask you if you want ot open an account because they have to. If they don't do enough sales, they get reprimanded.. they have quotas. Those tellers have all kinds of things they have to do other than service the customer.. and all of them are subversive.
This is the unfortunate consequence of a completely docile population. Which a consequence of the unavoidable goal of a government-run educational institution: to create and maintain a docile population. Think about it: (US) schools do not exist to produce optimal democratic citizens; they exist to teach unquestioning adherence to rules and regulations, and bureaucratic mechanisms for trying to effect change (student government).
Yes, that is to say that my job is, in as many words, to keep the man down. That's probably why I'm no good at it.
Dustin