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Former Head of CIA Think Tank Talks Privacy, Technology
blackbearnh writes "Carmen Medina, until recently, helped run the analysis side of the house at the CIA. She also ran the agency's think tank, the Center for the Study of Intelligence. A self-proclaimed heretic, she has a number of controversial views about how we gather intelligence and how technology is changing the game. She talked to O'Reilly Radar about this and other topics, including the possible ways that intelligence analysis could be crowdsourced, why government technology procurement is so broken, and how the public may need to readjust its views on what things such as privacy mean. Medina said, 'Government is viewed as inefficient and wasteful by American citizens. I would argue that one of the reasons why that view has grown is that they're comparing the inefficiency of government to how they relate to their bank or to their airline. Interestingly enough, for private industry to provide that level of service, there are a lot of legacy privacy barriers that are being broken. Private industry is doing all sorts of analysis of you as a consumer to provide you better service and to let them make more profit. But the same consumer that's okay with private industry doing that is not okay, in a knee-jerk reaction, with government doing that. And yet, if government, because of this dynamic, continues not to be able to adopt modern transactional practices, then it's going to fall further behind the satisfaction curve.'"
>>> Private industry is doing all sorts of analysis of you as a consumer to provide you better service and to let them make more profit. But the same consumer that's okay with private industry doing that is not okay, in a knee-jerk reaction, with government doing that.
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The reason is, Airlines and such don't have the same authority over you as the government. Its OK for them to know about it because at the end of the day we still have a choice to use a different airline. I'll be OK with it when we have real control over how the government/police can choose to treat us.
FTFA:
Some concepts of privacy, that we thought were rights, are going to have to give way as we find out that social networks are just a lot more efficient, and monitoring and digital ubiquity are all more efficient ways to enforce laws, for example. That's a big thing in Britain. I mean God only knows how many cameras they have on their streets. And they're using it in ways to fight crime that, frankly, I don't think is yet possible in the U.S. because of our privacy concerns.
Next time Carmen provides an example, she may want to pick one that actually has a track record which supports her views.
Correct me if I'm completely off base, but I'm reading this as the former head of the CIA whining about how "if business can do it, the government should be able to too". She correctly points out that the public doesn't seem to care when businesses invade their privacy, but she is using that to claim they shouldn't care when the government does it either, not to claim that the public should be concerned about both.
And come to think about it, what the hell does a former head of the CIA care about what the American public thinks about privacy anyway? Isn't the CIA only supposed to operate outside of the US or something like that?
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
The reason is, if you don't like what a private company is doing, you can decide not to do business with them. Hence, private companies evolve strategies to avoid annoying their customers.
If you don't like what the government is doing, well, I suppose the right-wingers have the slogan "love it or leave it." But most of us aren't willing to go that far.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
It's not "knee-jerk" because the government has a monopoly on force. The government can take your property without compensation and throw you in jail, courses of action denied to insurance companies and banks.
This person is a "heretic"? Only among people who value their privacy. She sounds more to me like a typical apologist for Big Brother.
Dog is my co-pilot.
One reason govt is inefficient is because every new administration and congress adds new laws and new goals without ever removing any.
However, the MAIN reason for inefficiency is the voter's demands for accountability. That seems like a good goal but it runs into the inventory conundrum--how much money do you want to spend tracking pencils?
Consider a billion-dollar (or euro) program. If you wish to track where each million goes, you end up with a thousand-line report. But if you want to track where each thousand goes--more accountability--then you end up with a million-line report, something that requires more time to produce by existing workers and also requires the oversight group to staff an entire new department. If the cost of the new department is less than the cost of the fraud uncovered, then it is cost-effective. Unfortunately, we hardly ever worry about effectiveness in government, we only worry about the appearance of being effective.
A rational business man knows it is cheaper to let employees 'steal' 3% of the pencils than it is to spend even 4% stopping the theft. A religious, moral, political person worried more about appearances believes it is more important to make a stand and spend whatever it takes to ensure no one steals. Consider the drug laws for instance. When I say legalize everything, some yutz says 'You wouldn't say that if your daughter was addicted to meth." And the truth is maybe I wouldn't. But the socio-political truth is that my daughter is addicted to meth under the laws and regime we currently have so that ain't fixing the problem.
Voters prefer costly action to no action and they prefer to vote for folks who will do something instead of the do-nothing pols. Effectiveness is not the goal. After 9/11, all the US govt had to do was tell people that the rule of not interfering with hijackers that we've been using for 40 years (Cuba hijackings) is no longer effective and that passengers ought to fight will all means possible to save their lives. That actually is what has happened in real life. The 4th plane that crashed in Pennsylvania and every single attempted terrorist activity on a plane since then has been prevented by other passengers.
But that isn't an acceptable solution to moralistic or impatient voters.
A big part of what they do is essentially a kind of journalism. Perhaps the solution to their problems AND the death of quality investigative journalism in America is to transform CIA into something akin to BBC News.
I think your suggestion for the CIA to get into the "journalism" business is about 50 years too late. Google "Operation Mockingbird".
"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media."
--William Colby, former CIA Director, quoted by Dave Mcgowan, Derailing Democracy
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
And yet, if government, because of this dynamic, continues not to be able to adopt modern transactional practices, then it's going to fall further behind the satisfaction curve.
Ha ha ha ha! Let me tell you how well private industry is doing. Last week I got on my online account with B of A. I discovered a deposit of $210.50 had been made to my account from out of state. I looked at the counter deposit and discovered that a Ms or Mr Chu from Virginia had deposited the $210.50 into their own account, but somehow in data entry a 'proof code' had been changed that put it in my account, with the exact same number, in another state. The deposit slip itself was filled out correctly and gave me enough information to figure out what had happened.
I tried to call them up. No dice as no number provided a human. So I carefully set about emailing them (online form) giving them ALL the information they needed to fix it, all the secret numbers, everything they needed to know. The next week I get a reply when I signed onto the account saying they considered this situation URGENT, but not only could they NOT email me at the address I provided, they also were not allowed to make outgoing calls to the contact number I provided. They gave me an 800 number to call, but only during 9-5 business hours.
Meanwhile Mr. Chu is out his $200 bucks.
Un fucking believable!
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
An excellent example of "missing the point theater". FWIW, it's also true that GP is only half right; but you're pretty much completely wrong, so I'll start with explaining why that is:
It doesn't matter that Company XYZ already has your data. GP's assertion is that they're less likely to abuse your data, because they don't want to lose you as a customer. If all the customers leave, then having all of the customers' data is moot because the marketing edge you get from that data means nothing if nobody will do business with you.
And for small-scale businesses that is perfectly true. Now try telling your CC company, bank, utility, telecom, or any local monopoly that they're annoying you and you might leave, and see what concessions they make. Will your TV provider give you a discount rate for a while? Maybe. Will they change fundamental policies like how they handle private data? No. And that is why GP is only half right as well.
GGP was correct; the reason consuemrs are "more ok" with businesses having their data is that businesses can't arrest you.