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Bruce Sterling On Total Information Awareness
securitas writes "Declan McCullagh interviews Bruce Sterling about Total Information Awareness (renamed Terrorist Information Awareness and raising concerns) or 'Poindexter's nutty scheme' as Sterling thinks of it. He predicts TIA will destabilize the government and lead to internal KGB-style coups. Whether you agree with him or not it makes for thought-provoking reading."
internal KGB-style coups
In Soviet Russia... oh, forget it.
Do you like German cars?
Total Information Technology.
(with apologies to Robin Williams)
Karma: Can only be portioned out by the Cosmos.
>John Poindexter, programmer, Navy Admiral, >National Security Advisor, etc.
You forgot convicted criminal.
I'm all for public involvement in the political process, but I guess the best we can hope for now is that this somehow leads to Slim Pickens riding a descending hydrogen bomb...
That was a very interesting article, however I do not like some of Bruce's answers. Whether or not I am allowed to approve, well...thats for someone else to decide. However, I want to give attention to one comment:
Just because it's the atom age, it doesn't mean we'll all have a private atom-powered helicopter. Just because it's the information age, it doesn't mean we're all going to profit or be made happier. It has secondary and tertiary effects that cannot be predicted. You don't envision a phone answering machine and predict the Lewinsky scandal--even though one is impossible without the other.
I personally believe that the efforts individuals make to better understand things, like computer technology, then living in the "information age" will leave that individual with a greater sense of security--And wouldnt that individual be in a greater position to lead the rest of society toward whatever might be better? Like a security expert speaking out against TIA with a solid argument?
He predicts TIA will destabilize the government and lead to internal KGB-style coups. Boy, it's a good thing that Bruce Sterling is not paranoid or anything. Otherwise, he'd come up with some really whacky theories.
We, as a country, have been headed that way for years. 9/11 just accelerated the pace.
We have emarked full tilt into the arena of socialism.
Oh? My health insurance is still as expensive as fuck, and my college tuitition is $36,000 a year and rising. Those are pretty bad indicators of a "socialist state" forming...
What part of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed" do you not understand?
What part of "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state" do you not understand?
Gathering information on people before they have done anything wrong is always a problem, especially if these people know that it is being collected. It makes poisioning the data pool attractive, even if it's only something as stupid as magazine subscriptions, email account names, aliases (which are legal as long as they're not used to deceive for nefarious purposes), and credit transactions.
The government is most likely to be able to track transactions that occur digitally, or require storage of information on computers that are not under the control of the individual whose data is being collected. Do you think that it's likely that terrorists will use these means, now that it's been announced that the government is collecting it? I'd think that they're more likely to buy guns from someone who has switched from running drugs into the country to running guns, to contact their fellow agents through 'chance' encounters, and to transact whatever seemingly legitimate business they use either with cash or through legitimate electronic transactions, which will make them blend into the electronic noise just like everyone else. How is this going to help matters?
The government already knows when one buys a new handgun through legitimate channels, through the Brady Law. They already should know about most of those who have explosives experience, since that is usually military training based to begin with, and demolitions companies, mining companies, and anyone else legitimately using explosives has to get their employees licensed. "Cyberterrorism" is an absolute joke of a term as long as easily broken-into OSes like anything Microsoft has ever put out is still in the mainstream and is still being used as a server, and there are probably dozens, if not hundreds of other examples like these.
I don't see how collecting all of this data is going to help.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I don't think that Sterling is right when he argues that Total Information Awareness will bring on some new rash of "KGB style coups." Some of you might remember that the NSA has been evesdropping on Congressmen for years (even on the staunchly pro-Defense-Military congressmen) and the CIA regularly keeps full files on all Congressmen with all of their dirty little secrets. The reason that there hasn't been a series of coups yet (well, ignore the 9-11 coup for now...) is that its far easier to blackmail people into having them do _your_ dirty work than to rat them out entirely. The only thing TIA will do is increase the leverage of the executive branch over the rest of society.
Lewinsky, Trent Lott, Newt Gingrich's book deal, David Dinkins lack of tax returns.
Data Mining is here. While the Republicans are more astute in the practical applications of tech and the Democrats tend toward the hip useless gadgets, Both sides are gearing up and will be using data mining against each other.
I have always said that KGB agents must have wept when they realised the information your typical marketing or credit card company have on the american citizen.
Poindexter may be a criminal and a boob American Express isnt.
Technology has a way of making the world feel smaller: Trains, Steamships, automobiles, airplanes and now googling (ridiculously easy and efficient datat-mining).
If you live in a small enough town, everyone knows everyone elses business...
When you remove the distance that geography or caste once maintained you are left with a very small planet where everyone may not know everyone else...but if they need to they can dig up any amount of dirt on you they want.
TIA is an initial step towards a decentralized type of always on information about anyone you could ever want...
And the only people who will be safe will be those without govt assigned ID (which means no CC's no ID's no Bank statements etc..) and the insanely wealthy...those who can afford to keep their sins a secret.
Much like it would be in a small town.
I hate small towns.
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonalbe searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
but that seems to have been forgotten, along with.."Congress shall make no law....abridging the freedom of speech or of the press."
Campaing finance reform restrictions on commericals 60 days before elections.
and "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
Every law restricting non-criminals from owning certain types of weapons.
Some times I wonder if legislatures even fscking read the constitution any more.
"Much work is lost, for the lack of a little more." -Edward H. Harriman
No, the second amendment is set up to guarantee the security and freedom of the state. Period. Full stop.
It makes no distinction between external threats and internal oppression (for a good reason).
Freedom Is Universal
Linux-Universe
Total Information Awareness underware is still available
I put the 'fun' in fundamentalism
Might I ask what a economic model has to do with TIA?
...
These things can be done in any type of government. In fascism, which you seem to be implying, the people wouldn't have a choice. In a democracy, with the right support from the media, it is also possible.
None of the indicators of socialism are present, by the way. On the contrary, we are moving further away from socialism. College costs are rising, health care costs are rising, companies (ie SCO) are very busy suing each other over IP violations, tax cuts are being made
Please don't use 'socialism' as term for any bad government. Socialism is something very specific, and not what you are talking about.
And why in the world are you saying that 'the terrorists' won? What the US is becoming is the opposite of what terrorists would want. How could a group of terrorists want us to invade their home countries?
It shows that they THINK we're gullable morons.
Just by renaming it to sound anti-terrorist, are we supposed to shut up and stop questioning it?
Instead of making our government BIGGER & MORE INTRUSIVE & STRIPPING AWAY OUR RIGHTS, why don't we investigate how 9/11 was allowed to happen when we had ALL THE INFO REQUIRED to prevent it?!?!?
Oh, I forgot--the investigation into that was quietly squashed without much media attention but we got color-coded alerts to make us feel that something "real" appropriate is being done.
"Hey, lets rename this unpopular law/project/war/etc. so people think it has to do with anti-terrorism, they'll shut up for sure especially if the media makes anyone speaking against it appear stupid, weak, liberal, unpatriotic, etc. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get a bunch of unpopular shit done what would've caused riots/impeachments just a few year ago! Best of all, when people start to ask questions about the Pres or VP dealings with Enron or Halliburton again, we can just change the terror alert color so the media can refocus on that without resorting another murder case in California."
"And just in case we don't have any more terrorism in the USA, lets go piss off the Palestinians and make the Middle-eastern countries think we're gonna invade them--that'll stir up enough shit to make at least another group of crazies blow something up here--and we can milk that bombing to our advantage just like 9/11! We'll be silencing our critics and getting unpopular initiatives done for the next 50 years using this strategy!"
I'm obviously exaggerating to make a point but really, don't you think there's a grain of truth to associating unpopular initiatives with anti-terrorism just to get people to stop questioning it?
Maybe you should read the writings of the individuals who actually wrote the bill of rights. All 10 apply to the rights of individuals not the rights of government, or perhaps you think it is only the government that has a right to free speech?
At some point, you realize you lost, pick yourself up and dust yourself off, and plan for the next one. It's done, there is no chance of the election being reversed or any other outcome. Get over it, and try to get Dubya out of office this upcoming election if you don't like what happened.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
It seems that they can not even perform basic background checks on their own employees: CIO of Department of Homeland Security Suspended. Seems she got her "doctorate in computer information systems" from a phony college.
Yeah, that is the type of thing that inspires confidence.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
..but this time you and I get to be in front of the cameras, unasked, and everything will be archived and indexed on permanent storage, including (especially) a complete record of your online and telecommunication activity. Scott McNealy would say "get over it", but government will use this data to protect society against potential threats - and eventually, any kind of dissent may be considered the seed of a potential serious threat to society, as Orwell predicted.
You heard it here first. Poindexter and TIA is the Ministry of Silly Walks.
(And I'm supposed to feel better because they changed "total" to "terrorist"? That's just insulting to everyone's intelligence... grrr.)
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
10 seconds my ass. I stick in the search terms "bruce sterling", "real name", & "fiction" (after all we need to separate BS the science fiction writer from BS the plumber), I get 390 hits. After glancing through likely pages, I get the real names to a half dozen different writers, but not Bruce! I even go to vivisimo, get some hits unique to google, but still no real name. Man, the New World Order better not depend on my lame ass skills.
Now I know I could track it down if I spent two hours going through search engines, varying search arguments, but what the hell am I doing wrong??? *sigh*
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
I've noticed this on
Of course, this means I'll probably be modded down on this post.
To the point:
We are slowly evolving into a new form of government:
democratic fascism.
People get to vote, there are multiple parties, but fundamentally, it's a one party state - like a hydra - many heads that hate each other, but the body walks in one direction, and we're all trapped on its back.
When things get rough they throw the slaves some bread (social services) and circuses (TV). This shuts the proles up, and the ruling class stays put.
Same as it ever was.
RR
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Luckily, the guys who wrote the 2nd amendment didn't work/live in a vaccuum... they left tons of writings on why they believed the things they fought for. Read up on it a bit; I've got a standard $100 bet with acquaintances who are anti-2nd amendment that they can't find one instance of a constitution framer arguing for collective rights in firearms ownership, as opposed to individual rights, which it most certainly is.
The Democratic Party: We've been pussies since 1968!
Under the U.S. form of government, we are getting decade-record levels of unemployment and crime, but at least the rich are a little richer, if you don't coun't externalities like the crime rate and overall property values.
Just don't count on all those nearly three million newly-unemployed people to vote on election day. I wouldn't put it past Bush to do something "exciting" right before election day. After all, you have a guy who claimed that he didn't tell anyone about his drunk driving conviction because he was trying to protect his daughters, but he doesn't ask the Secret Service to lift a finger to keep them from being caught drinking underage. He simply can not be trusted. How many times did he leave the "have you ever been convicted" question blank on Texas election forms? However, there is still hope.
Personally, I'm not particularly against massive databases, provided they're real-time public access, and the maintainers of the database are also represented in them like everyone else...
Given that the databases will exist - large corporations and government agencies will just not tell you they exist and keep using them if they're made "illegal" - and can only get more powerful and far-reaching, I think that the best choice is to make the database read-accessible to everyone rather than limit access to a powerful and unaccountable elite.
Note that I am NOT asserting that it's particularly nice that the databases exist in the first place - just that the genie's out of the bottle, and that the best way to minimise abuses of power would be to minimise secrecy. Otherwise we'll probably end up with 1984.
It's amusing that personal privacy advocates are often the same ones screaming for government or corporate openness - while privacy (== secrecy) exists, anyone handed power will have a screen to hide behind to hide abuses of said power. Yes, humans like privacy. But privacy, whether for the government or the citizen, may prove fundamentally in opposition to the maximisation of the freedoms a civilised society can provide, while still remaining a civilised society.
This is explored further in David Brin's excellent book: "The Transparent Society: Will Technology force us to choose between Privacy and Freemdom?" As he points out, "people generally seem to want privacy for themselves and accountability for everyone else...".
Choice of masters is not freedom.
My definition of "dumb conservative" is a conservative who earns less than $500,000/year or has a net worth of less than several million dollars.
These poor souls would rather focus on why they (the middle class) have to pay a bit more taxes than the poor instead of focusing on why they have to pay a LOT more taxes than the ultra-wealthy or profitable corporations like Microsoft. You knew Microsoft paid $0 taxes in 1999, right?
These morons also like complaining about things like a minimum wage bill because it raises the minimum wage rather than complaining about the luxury yacht fuel subsidies buried inside that same bill. "To hell with the undernourished child of a single working parent, my taxes shouldn't pay for that! Instead, my hard-earned taxes are gonna help filthy rich bastards play on their yacht because my misguided middle-class ass is too lazy to get informed."
smartest: rich conservatives
average: everyone else
dumbest: middle-class conservatives
I hope to become a rich conservative sometime this decade but until then, it isn't in my best self-interest to be a conservative or liberal right now.
What's your definition of "dumb conservative"?
Demanding that science fiction predict the future, and then scoffing when it fails, is really a kind of ad hominem against the genre. Great science fiction need not literally predict as much as it says, "here are some possible implications of X."
... On the doublethink front, contemplate the fact that approximately half of US citizens think that Saddam Hussein was heavily involved in the September 11th attacks.
One of the most famous "predictions" is that of Orwell's 1984, which (of course) has not exactly come to pass. On the other hand, many concepts of 1984 have proven tremendously robust and recognizable, such as "double speak" and "double think." You can glimpse shadows of the larger issues, such as three major world powers which engage in shifting alliances of 2 vs 1.
So, read Sterling's "Distraction" and be amazed by an enthusiastic, over-the-top speculation on trends in politics and manipulation of the public, with intriguing little sidetrips on new technology and ancient history (well, not exactly ancient --- but I found the Regulators and Moderators to be truly interesting folk; they don't need to ever come into real existence to be evocative, and to think, "well, really, just what keeps them from existing?") The whole idea of "reputation servers" is coming into existence right now, implemented by Google, blogs, and (yes) Slashdot's
cooperative editing and posting system. (Not to mention USNews's annual beauty pageant for universities. The USA has such a tremendous stable of great universities, it is pretty discouraging to see a "top 10" gather so much shallow attention.)
At any rate --- concern about TIA and its kin (which should include Google, you know --- see the interview with Sterling) is perfectly legitimate, and if SciFi isn't perfectly prognostic about what it's going to mean, well, do our leaders really do any better? Does Ashcroft have a conventional understanding of the Bill of Rights?
Any think tank that wouldn't want to have a Bruce Sterling around is a think tank that's too timid to ever say anything truly mind stretching.
Americans have no reason to fear their government?
You do realize this is the TIA article, right? The very point of the parent article is that we have a good reason to be worried about our government!
If the counterexamples are poor, then your original example - Germany under Hitler - was poor as well. It was just as ready to be controlled by fear as Iraq and Afghanistan were. (btw, Iraq was a very prosperous and stable country before Hussein - so they actually weren't ready to be controlled by fear) Your point remains weak.
As for the ad hominem attack, I'll just ignore it. After all, resorting to logical fallacies is a good sign one's losing an argument.
A researcher would do well to think carefully about the potential usage before taking any money to work on TIA.
The day this sucker goes live, you know its going to get the most viscous slashdotting imaginable, not to mention all the spammers, script kiddies, pro microsoft, pro linux, jehovah witnesses, jews for jesus, etc who all are going ddos, port scan, submit fraudalant information, etc etc etc.......
By the time its all over, we'll have Furher Ashcroft annoucing they are searching for a heinous terrorist known as "Heywood jablowme" aka "Al Coholic".
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
And if the Bush administration overcame congressional objections and got a deep data-mining system working?
An insane information-hungry KGB or a relatively open and decent government? Vote with your feet. Get the hell away from those lunatics. Who the hell wants to live in a USA with a TIA in it? Why would you want to invest it that country? The currency would crash. The political elite would annihilate one another.
Mr. Sterling is making a big assumption here: you will always have somewhere that is different to move to. One _conspiracy theory_ I've been harbouring is that the USA's plan is to politically assimilate the rest of the world so that there will not BE another place to go to, in effect. Everyone will have basically the same privacy, human rights, freedom of speech (or lack of it) laws.
An "impeachment" is not a conviction or finding of wrongdoing. An impeachment is an accusation.
To "be impeached" is to be accused of a crime by the assembled Congress. Clinton was not convicted: he was not removed.
Impeachment is not a conviction. This confusion of terms was intentional by Clinton's enemies, and has infected the body politic. It is a murder of language, and a calculated one.
Clinton was accused of shading the truth (he didn't lie: he asked for a definition of sex from the judge, who told him intercourse. He'd had oral sex, which gave him an out.
Clinton was simply smarter than the criminals --leaking special prosecutor info is a crime -- who had set him up on a hearing concerning another setup - Paula Jones.
Starr and his elves had found out about Lewinsky the night before the PJ deposition. Clinton knew they knew, so it was a battle of wits with Clinton packing a rocket launcher, and his tormenters armed with a Rush Limbaugh slingshot.
The pieces of work from Starr's office told the judge that Lewinsky's affair with Clinton was pertinent to the Jones deposition. It wasn't. They merely wanted to get Clinton under oath, where he would be forced to make a choice: lie about his sex life, or tell the truth and wreck his personal and public life.
Clinton was smarter than that, and chose the third option: narrow the definition of sex, and then truthfully deny having that kind of sexx described by the judge. He simply was a better lawyer and a better man than the men who lied to the judge about the relevance of Lewinsky to the Jones case.
Of course, Clinton was fined for outsmarting his tormenters. And his witchhunters got away clean with lying to the judge, and got the only real "scandal" they could get after seven long years of trying to find anything other than unsupportable BS from his enemies to charge him with.
The Repubs, and some really stupid f-ing Demos, decided to give this pack of rabid misusers of a tax-paid prosecution the impeachment (accusation) they so achingly wanted.
The combined Congress realized they were being asked to remove a President for getting a blowjob. Sanity broke out.
Flashforward to today: a sitting President fantasized a dire enemy in a ruined country around the world. He lied and lied about the imminent threat to the US. He got his war, killing tens of thousands of men in pickup trucks and T-shirts. He maimed possibly hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children.He wrecked the power grid, cut off food for millions of helpless people.
Evidence for his fantasy was nonexistent both before and after the "war" (attack of Starship Troopers vs. the Flintstones). His people profit handsomely from the occupation.
And no one says "impeachment".
A blow job from an intern is more impeachable than the ideologically based murder of tens of thousands, and the theft of a country.
If the purpose of the "Terrorist" Information Awareness database is to collect information on terrorists, then why would all US citizens be included?
It doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to realize that the government is making suspects of us ALL.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
Just reading this thread I've noticed that this is the most offtopic story I've seen yet.
The threads spawned by it range from everything from Marxism to gun control.
It's great, there aren't enough OT modpoints in the world to take care of it
Most people wouldn't classify Orwell's '1984' as science fiction. It's not a narrow genre-bound work, Orwell didn't publish his stories in pulp SF magazines. And 1984 was about Stalinism. Orwell was a former Communist, and very disillusioned about the whole thing.
Not exactly. From US v. Miller:
In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a âoeshotgun having a barrel of less that eighteen inches in lengthâ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that is use could contribute to the common defense. Aymette v. State, 2 Humphreys (Tenn.) 154, 158.
Aymette v. State actually concerned a concealed knife, not a firearm. Interestingly enough, there was another decision about the same time from either Tennessee or Kentucky that found that a miniature shotgun was a useful weapon for a militia.
And, on top of that, Aymette v. State turned on the presence of the phrase "for the common defense" in the Tennessee Constitution at that time. That particular phrase had been proposed and explicitly rejected by the US Senate during debates on the Bill of Rights. So, even that qualifier is questionable.
We are unable to accept the conclusion of the court below and the challenged judgement must be reversed. The cause will be remanded for further proceedings.
There are two key phrases here: "not within judicial notice" and "remanded for further proceedings". The former phrase means that the Court would not conclude that a sawed-off shotgun was or was not part of the ordinary military equiopment, because no one presented evidence to support it. The reason? It's at the beginning of the decision:
No appearance for appellees.
No one showed up on behalf of the defendants, leaving the US government to present their case unopposed. Had there been even a semi-competent defense, it would have been a non-issue, because the US Army was using sawed-off shotguns as late as the Vietnam conflict. They were common in the trench warfare of WWI, which preceded this decision in 1939.
That brings us to the latter phrase: "remanded for further proceedings". The case was supposed to go back to the lower court to determine if the firearm in question did indeed meet the criteria established by the court. But by this time, Miller was dead (under suspicious circumstances) and apparently the US Attorney quickly cut a deal with his co-defendant, Frank Layton, to avoid the embarrassment of having the conviction thrown out after an evidentiary hearing.
So, while US v. Miller did indeed set the criteria for restricting ownership of certain weapons, the criteria very clearly permits the firearms that the government now prohibits.
An honest reading of US v. Miller doesn't yield the interpretation that most attribute to it.
I have to disagree with him on that point. They who control the TIA would have heavy political clout. They would stay hidden and mostly unknown to average Americans, and a change in political leadership would have no effect on their ownership of the big brother machine. So as long as the smart politician kowtowed to them, his skeletons would stay safely in the closet. If you want historical precedence for this just read up on J. Edgar Hoover.
Also the owners of TIA would have little need to actually destroy someone with the information they would have. They could just coerce candidates drop out of a race (like they did to Perot) or vote a certain way or use the information to further their own agenda (like they used the Office of Fatherland Security recently to track down the Democrat representatives who fled Texas to Oklahoma.) Sunshine laws and the Freedom of Information Act were meant to counteract these type of abuses but the faction in power now flagrantly violates these laws (e.g. Cheney's meetings with Enron and other Energy execs.)
TIA could be viewed as one more check and balance in the system though one not defined by our Constitution. However just because I don't think it will be destablizing doesn't mean it will be good for America. If Uncle Sam dances to the tune of secret puppetmasters then our system will come to resemble that of the Soviet Union and I think Bruce Sterling's reference to the KGB was an apt one.
If you accept the premise of the article, I don't think there's any doubt that we're close to fascism today. It's still early and we could reverse course in less than 18 months. But I think there's little doubt that history will observe that the US came close to losing WW-II 60 years after the fact.
I'm also sure that many of these people have no idea that they're fascist. Hitler was not Satan incarnate, Nazi Germany did not come into existence overnight, and we must always be on guard against history repeating.
As for the OP's uninformed comments, the proper description for the countries he described as "socialist" is "authoritarian" -- and there's no doubt that this country is shifting towards authoritarism in addition to fascism.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
It doesn't take a terribly "liberal interpretation" of the 4th amendment to see a "right to privacy" here. I mean, it would be pretty extreme to claim this prevents surveillence in a public place, but I think TIA, Carnivore, etc. constitute unreasonable searches against people's papers and effects and are certainly done without probable cause.
This isn't as broad a "right to privacy" as some might like, but it's not a stretch at all to claim that it rules out trying to spy on as much of the country as you can manage.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
It's really a stupid idea. If you consider that the guys are white hats (yea yea), then it's just noise that has to be filtered. Law enforcement by database, ubiquitous and just as stupid rather than targetted and accurate.
They are just to damned lazy to get off their dead asses and do the Human Intellegence they are paid to do.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
On the radio show This American Life, a segment described how police used the case summary of an FBI profiler as a template for a forced confession. Under pressure to find the killer(s), police used intimidation and duress to coax a suspect to sign a false confession, the conviction since overturned by DNA evidence. The suspect, unaware of case particulars, was given a confession to sign lifted verbatim from an FBI profiler's report. The police used a best guess of how the crime occurred based on the evidence to frame a patsy.
In the not distant future with Total Information Awareness, it will be trivial to find a patsy for any crime. The person murdered attended the same university and you shared a class or two (enrollment database). You enjoy violence and murder (video store database). The murder occured a mile away and within 30 minutes of when you filled up your car at the gas station (credit card database). We have established relationship, motif, and opportunity.
My point is that extremely causal data will be used to make relationships where none exist and to support conclusions which no hard data supports. It will become trivial to gather a group of suspects for any crime, none of which have anything to do with it.
The databases will be used to get tough on crime, which was a euphemism in the 80's for put pressure on police and courts to find a patsy and put them away to make us politically significant. The wave of released prisoners based on evaluation of DNA evidence in recent years is proof of this.
Are you a terrorist? I bet if we look at the proper data points we can make anyone look like one...
"You have liberated me from thought."