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Airport Monitoring of Travellers via Blackberry
glhturbo writes "According to this article in Mass. High Tech, Massachusetts State Police stationed at Logan Airport will soon have access (via Blackberry handhelds) to "7 billion records" containing information on "nearly 98 percent of the U.S. population, including, for example, a person's prior residence and with whom he or she lived, criminal information, court filings, vehicles owned, and even restricted government data." The database is from a Massachusetts company, LocatePlus, started by a former policeman who was "on the waiting list for the FBI". Seems like a good tool, but major potential for abuse, and hopefully no false identifications."
Instead of just pulling celebrities out of the waiting line to check them, airport security gaurds can find out where they live!
This is a neat little database, but I have to wonder what the quality of the database is. If it's like other databases, it's sorely out of date. Can't be an easy job to keep tabs on 98% of the population.
And I also wonder about the false positive rate. Extensive databases might just show up how connected we are. Just like studies that show that a huge number of us are related to the Queen of England through some tenuous tie, if we dug deep enough I bet we could find links between millions of average Joes and people who are terrorists. Insignificant links, but how does the database know that? It comes down to the judgement of the officer, and his training. And any security system that shows a false positive rate is weakened by that. False negatives are much less damaging to security.
I get a picture in my head from the movie "A Beautiful Mind" where John Nash is in his shed, putting pictures and strings on the wall, showing all the relationships between them. Except, these relationships are going to be in a database, and will be taken seriously just because a computer said so.
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
Eh? Is it 1984 or 2004? These days I just can't tell.
I remember the goverment making profiles of people who where doing war protests and the like. Will this information be included in the profile? I also seem to recall an incident where a protester was flagged at harrased at an airport.
The truck driver is driving 100 pounds of TNT in a delivery crate right into the airport unchecked. What pisses me off most about this loss of privacy, how your personal information including your underwear size and what are the last 3 videos you rented are - is that for all that work, and all that money spent on technology, they don't do shit to actually secure the place. You think you can drive a truck up to an El Al airliner in Tel Aviv unchecked? Not unless you want a .50cal Barrett round in the chest from 5000 meters away before you get anywhere NEAR the airliner.
Read Marcus Ranum's book, the "Myth of Homeland Security." Yay, we paid for a bunch of blackberries that will get lost or stolen and some tech firm pocketed good change with a fat ass Oracle project. Yay.
You, the passenger, aren't one damn bit safer. Tell yourself that while you watch the truck load the pretzels and soda pop out the window while the guys are looking in your toiletry bag at your toothbrush and blackberrying to see if you ever lived in Hoboken, NJ.
Lastly, you know why the terrorists picked Logan to board? As CNN and others reported in the weeks that followed 9/11 - Logan's security was known to be the worst on the eastern seaboard.
I also worked in the insurance industry. We also had the screen actors guild account - for everywhere but CA. My coworkers and me would look up movie stars and gawk at their personal info - most of it just said something like "Joe Berstein talent, NY,NY" or something like that - but the point is ---WE WERE SNOOPING.
I have no excuse nor reason - we were star struck.
My Point Personal information will be abused somehow!
Like, I won't arrest you if you pay me 10k.... Or I won't tell your wife you've been living in an apartment in Florida with an unmarried woman...
The potential for abuse is just enormous.
However, this kind of capability is not going to go away. What we need is a structure in place that will ensure that no abuses take place. It's a cliche, but we need a monitor of the monitors...
Here's another one (but appropriate): who will monitor the monitors of the monitors?
Don't forget folks, it's not only the Republicans who are itching to strip your rights away. Massachusetts is about as Democratic as you can get and they're in on it too.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
When I can find out Bill G's home address, Dick Cheney's driver's licence number, George's arrest record, and Ken Lay's bank balance - then I'll say it's fair.
Anyone who says this is not ripe for abuse is a shareholder.
Note: I'm merely throwing out a hypothetical, this is not necessarily my belief. Just a discussion point.
On Slashdot, it is commonly argued and agreed upon that "security thru obscurity" is a falacy and the best way to get yourself into trouble. Obscure facts and details are eventually discovered and exploited. It is better to have all source and algorithms out in the open, have everyone pick at it, find the holes and patch them.
Compare this to the commonly held belief in keeping all personal information "secret". If someone tries hard enough, they can pretty much discover any information about yourself. Private detectives, for example, specialize in "hacking" personal information (arrest record, who you are sleeping with). Would it not be better to "open source" your life and deal with the consequences? Your SSN and Credit Card numbers should be secured with something better than mere obscurity, for example. If you are cheating on your spouse you would assume you are going to be caught and be able to deal with the consequences. With everything out in the open we don't have to worry about blackmail and dirty tricks and you better know people's character and motivations. Kinda like looking inside a program's source and seeing the flaws.
Note, these are NOT my opinions, just things that went through my head at 10pm.
Brian Ellenberger
A: This service has zero info that you shouldn't have. It's all public records, the scary part of this service is that they seem to have most of the nation's public records about individuals assembled in an easy-to-query form.
The fact that info is public record does NOT mean that it's OK to assemble it with OTHER information that is ALSO public record and make the result - or even the original public records - available at electronic speed.
One of the big objections to the creation of the Social Security System was that the SS# would serve as a universal identifier, making it easier to assemble dossiers of individuals from diverse public records. This almost killed the program - which was eventually passed on the promise (among others) that the nubmer would NEVER EVER EVER be used in that way.
Remember that this was before WWII, which means before computers and even xerography. ("copying" was, at best, thermofax, blueprint, or photography.) AND in the midst of the "Great Depression", with its starving masses of people (including the elderly) who had just gone bankrupt and lost their homes, farms, and businesses in a pre "welfare" system environment.
Can you IMAGINE how concerned they were to consider blocking the creation of the SS system JUST to prevent the hand-construction and misuse of manual dossiers composed of public information?
The US classified information rules DO classify the JUXTIPOSITION of certain publicly available unclassified information - whenever this juxtaposition hints at something that IS sensitive. This happens in nuclear physics, radio, and several other fields. Why should individuals be any less protected from combining public information in a way that stips more of their privacy than the individual records standing alone?
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Databases run in their private time by policemen or retired policemen were, back in the '70s, a dodge to get around new laws banning ilicit governmental record keeping. These laws were passed after the government's investigative agencies at all levels (FBI, Military Intelligence, State/County/City police) went 'WAY out of bounds on domestic surveilance and so-called "dirty tricks" against people suspected of participating in the civil rights and anti(vietnam)war movement. (See COINTELPRO for an example.)
They were SUPPOSED to destroy the ill-gotten info. But instead some of them absconded with it and set up for-profit companies to maintain it and sell access back to the very police departments that weren't supposed to have it. This let the departments continue to use it and CLAIM that they didn't have it.
So this one is run by a former policeman, eh? Any bets on whether it's a modern continuation of one of those ilicit databases?
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Dylan said you had to pay to keep from going through these things twice. Well we DID pay and we're STILL going through them again! B-(
B: Since this company charges by the query, too many queries from a device will likely cause that device quickly be deauthorized by whomever's paying the bill.
Aren't we talking about the Federal Government's Homeland Security boondoggle department? Somehow I doubt that breaking the US budget is an issue.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
blackberries have the ability to be wirelessly wiped out of data... the BES admin can lock down a device (with a password the admin sets) wirelessly or send the kill command which wipes all data from the device...
I have one of these devices (I'm a cop), although I do not live in Mass, and it uses a different provider for the information. All of the information is based on collection from three sources: public records, driving records, and criminal history. The public records are fairly accurate, but they are not perfect. The driving and criminal records are more accurate, and reflect the same information that I can collect when running a vehicle tag or a driver's license. That's the key. I need to know who I am searching for in order to get the information. I can't just put in a name, for example, with no other information (such as a date of birth, SSN, city of birth, etc.) and expect to receive any information. It just doesn't work that way. Is it dangerous? Depends on your stance towards records queries, I suppose. I can get all of this information without the Blackberry, but it is more convenient when I'm on foot interacting with a crowd to have the device. Push come to shove, however, and I'll take you back to the patrol car to get the information. It works for both of us, in a sense. I don't have to go back to the car to get the info, and you don't have to waste the time coming with me. Something else to consider: I am required by law (at least in my state) to protect the information that I gather on a person. The law is so protective that I can be held responsible if someone else HEARS the information on my radio, including the person I am checking! This would undoubtedly extend to my control over the Blackberry. If I lost it, I would be in a great deal of civil liability. That doesn't prevent someone from using the device illegally, granted, but it is something to consider none the less.