Slashdot Mirror
Total Information Awareness, For One
Jason writes "This guy has created his own TIA program for his electronic transactions around DC. He writes, 'Conceptually, I decided to create a personal TIA program to track my own electronic movements... and to document every single electronically-recorded transaction I've made.' A small vignette into what could be done with your electronic droppings."
looks like he just took quicken or MS money or some equivalent application and added addresses and posted the locations on a map. This doesn't seem to be nearly the scope of ashcroft's wet dream come true (TIA).
You seem to be suggesting that perhaps it is wrong for the US Government to operate a repressive and opressive system like the TIA. Well, you are entitled to your opinion. After all this is America. At the same time, this is America, so your implication is treasonous. Please remain seated until federal agents have come to a complete stop and John Ashcroft has arrived at your domicile.
Where everyone knows all your secrets...
When personal data is confidential, only governments and big business will have access to it. When personal data is public, even corrupt officials will be forced to behave.
The genie is out of the bottle, and it seems that only laws to mandate total and full access to all data by anyone who wants it will protect us from those who would seek to use such power against us.
Yes, I know it'd be a nightmare if anyone could monitor my phone records, but the nightmare could become quite fun if it went both ways.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
> a personal TIA program to track my own electronic movements
So is he an Autobot or a Decepticon?
Why does this surprise him? It need not take that much work to figure out that writing checks or using the "card" can get you mapped out, especially if the govt. has the warrant to track you (and with the patriot act, it shouldn't be too hard). Redundant to say the least.
A blog like any other.
I can't help but come to the conclusion that; You don't get out much, do you?
There's more info on LifeLog here and here.
nms
I too have been working on this sort of thing out of interest, but to a much larger degree. Since all my emails, chat logs, financial transactions, contact details, photos, etc. are digital and I have a record of them, I am able to place keys between them and come up with all sorts of useless info (which I will not share :P). Such things as:
Can look at a photo, then see how much money I spent on that date, where I spent it and what I said about it to my friends online using regexps.
Can map out (like this article) my location at any one time, with photos if it was since July 2003 (when I got my digital camera)
Can at-a-glance see all communication with any one person, and who that person knows through CC'd emails, group chats, etc.
Can get a calendar style day by day breakdown of time spent online, amount spent and where, amount I spoke to people online that day, etc.
The system is pretty cool but needs a bit more work before I am happy with it, and it is probably going to be just for me since it is a mess of SQL, shell scripts, perl and java.
Needless to say, the amount of data and stuff I can do with it is very scary. I cannot factor in recorded phone calls, precise supermarket purchases, etc. TIA and it's inevitable bigger brother (think patriot act then patriot act2) could store a lot more of my life than I would ever want to give out.
Warhammer forums
I don't think I've seen this mentioned before so here goes...
As an act of civil disobedience, as a group flood TIA, Carnivore, etc with false information. Start referring to your online contacts as "terrorists", make references to "picking up the fertilizer and diesel", instant message each other with false meeting points you never actually go to, and generally throw a wrench into the cogs of the machine by making the signal-to-noise ratio more noise than signal.
Some may call this unpatriotic, others may see it as patriotic, it's a personal judgement call as I see it.
I was hoping for some insight into the problem such as how to fight TIA
Umm... just a shot in the dark here - but how about not electing governments interested in implementing a defacto police state and pursuing imperialistic foreign policies to prop up an obsolete oil-based economy?
But, hey, what do I know. No pity for you. My government tried this shit and enough people cared to stop it.
Or.. perhaps you welcome your new overlords.
I don't really think he needs a computer program to do this. Judging from some of my male coworkers, this sort of thing has been going on for years. If anyone wants to know exactly where he is at any given point in time, he should just get married... and then they can call his wife. ;)
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
The ability to gather the data about you has long been there. Commercial sources have been able to do this for nearly two decades, anyone remember the late and not lamented Lotus Marketplace ?.
The real trick is to turn the raw data into meaningfull information. Its that lack of discrimination thats truly scary in letting the government assume that kind of power.
I have no wish to have storm troopers drilling holes in my ceiling because my name is one letter off from a terrorist, or because I bought a pint of humous at the supermarket. Untill there is sufficient discrimination in the system to be intelligent about who it singles out, and Unless there is further the mandatory requirement for human investigation and discretion before acting this type of technology will be nothing but a loose cannon.
As things currently stand this type of information will just be used to harrass and persecute people that have been flagged by or have annoyed some government beureuacrat. Terry pratchet in his truly insightfull manner summed up the relationship between the populace and the law, "Commander Grimes surveyed the crowd of people and amused himself by trying to figure out what each one was guilty of". Everyone is guilty of something, with the current level of litigation and legality within our society most people are guilty of many things they aren't even aware of.
If TIA raw data is available for call up on any individual, suspicious material will be found, and nominally innocent people will have their lives made a hell. If however it can be predictive and then mediated with severe limits it could actually serve a valuable purpose.
Uh ... and you're not? It is NOT paranoia when they actually are out to get you, you know.
... no significant barriers to misuse.
Besides, I thought it was interesting to see a concrete example of what everyone (paranoids as well as normal sheep) has been worrying about. It's one thing when cops, spooks and other investigators have to spend time and effort to research what their victims, I mean, subjects are doing. It's quite another when detailed historical information about every person in the U.S. can be pulled up on a graphics monitor on an instant's notice, with no more effort than a couple of mouse clicks. No, I don't like that at all
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
If you live outside the USA, you should take special interest in [former TIA chief] [and felon] John Poindexter's recent open letter in the New York Times.
It's pretty handwavy, but he makes a couple of interesting claims:
responsible for discovering what is possible; other agencies will be
responsible for determining its correct use. I'm all for free exploration,
but this is calculatedly naive. I think this project in particular was
created with use in mind, and I think tax funded research should reflect
what taxpayers feel is in their best interest.
American hotspot, claiming that American financial data isn't analyzed).
I doubt this*, but even if it's true, citizens abroad should be letting their governments know about how they feel about the US accessing their data.
*: DARPA funds a lot of research into how to appease American privacy laws while conducting surveillance.
From my unreliable, tertiary sources I believe that the UK has 6 months for standard data (eg; if you dont use your blockbuster card for 6 months they delete you from their database), CCTV in towns is removed after 2 days (if you ever need the police to review some, or want to get a copy then you need to be quick or you are out of luck), credit card data I am not sure about, though banking data disappears from my online statement every quarter and credit card data disappears after a year. One cant help but assume that my data is sitting in some offsite backup somewhere though. All this is covered under the UK's Data Protection Act 1998, in which an individual can demand a company or govt agency to give them all the data they want about themselves (for a fee of no more than inflation-adjusted 15 GBP), and if they do not, or are found to be withholding data, they are subject to a fine of something like 30000 GBP per instance.
Warhammer forums
Bush's essay is really fascinating to read: he envisions a magical desk that could record all a person's thoughts & encounters, and provide the ability to browse that library through a special screen on the device. Keep in mind that this was in 1945, right at the beginning of the computer era, when these machines were the size of buildings, far more complicated to operate, and nowhere near powerful enough. Now, half a century later, Bell feels that the technology is finally at the point where Bush's ideas can be implemented. Think what you will of Microsoft, or of the "big brother" implications of such a machine -- the very fact that this sort of thing is being put into practice is quite impressive.
Anyone working on such omnipresent recording & retrieval systems needs to be aware of this prior art.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
When I first looked at this, I thought (as a lot of people here have commented) that this wasn't much of a big deal: so what? This guy scanned in a few receipts and plotted them on a map, big deal...
However, as I started to look more closely at his patterns, I thought to myself: wow! Based on just this tiny swatch of information, I already know the aproximate area where he lives. If I wanted, I could find the average household income in his neighborhood. I know what he eats and I can tell if he's going to have a party next week based on what he got at the grocery store.
I know what date and time he went to the market, so if I had a few more data points, I could probably predict when he's going to be there.
He got a map of Central America at Borders, perhaps a statistical model shows that people following his patterns are likely to be terrorists who want to commit atacks in Central America? Or perhaps we can market cheap airline tickets to him?
While this may just look like a guys random map, you can piece together a whole lot from this.
Yes, but on the other hand no commercial interest has even a fraction of the resources available to it that the Federal Government has, and would cheerfully misdirect to this end. And you also don't realize that long-term archival storage of this information isn't the point. The fact that you bought a box of doughnuts ten years ago is irrelevant: the fact that you bought something yesterday that is considered relevant today is the point. What they can do is require organizations that do collect personal information (credit bureaus, banks) to look for specific information and forward it to the TIA systems. There is already precedent for that: banks are required to report cash transactions that exceed specific limits, for example.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Take a look at his purchasing behavior at Safeway - Goya rice, three separate purchases of mangos.
And what's this? Kim-chee? Bean paste, pickled bamboo, and guava? Any connection to North Korea here? Has he purchased any maps of North Korea lately?
Also appears to be an avid news reader, and heavy user of public transportation. Definitely a troublemaker.
No only do they want it available with judicial oversight, they want it available on-demand, conveniently, right on their desktops. No waiting ... just point and click. No thanks ... I want these people to have to work to find out anything of consequence about me.
... anyone wanting to find out everything about you specifically will have some work to do.
The other, bigger, danger is in the centralization of information. Yes, certainly, someone with a stack of subpoena forms can go make a bunch of phone calls, find out where your accounts are, and get what he wants. The data is stored all over in different systems by different organizations
Now imagine that same information being stored on a massive government system or network. Even if it isn't stored there, but is simply available upon-demand by that government system it means that your personal info can be grabbed by a Fed, special agent, hacker, cracker, terrorist, or foreign government at a single point of entry.
That's risky at best. Given the government's track record on security (and the Department of Homeland Security's recent choice of Microsoft products for all it's in-house needs) I think it's fair to assume that unauthorized access would occur.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.