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more on EFF: American Travelers to Get Secret 'Risk Assessment' Scores
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2006 15:14:25 -0500
Begin forwarded message: From: Adam Fields <ip20398470293845 () aquick org> Date: December 1, 2006 3:10:14 PM EST To: David Farber <dave () farber net> Cc: ip () v2 listbox comSubject: Re: [IP] EFF: American Travelers to Get Secret 'Risk Assessment' Scores
For IP, if you wish: On Thu, Nov 30, 2006 at 05:31:29PM -0500, David Farber wrote: [...]
"The government is preparing to give millions of law-abiding citizens 'risk assessment' scores that will follow them throughout their lives," said EFF Senior Counsel David Sobel. "If that wasn't frightening enough, none of us will have the ability to know our own score, or to challenge it. Homeland Security needs to delay the deployment of this system and allow for an informed public debate on this dangerous proposal."
[...] Suppose that someone is flagged by the system and that person is actually a dangerous criminal. What's the right response? Simply don't let them board the plane? Additional searching? Arrest them? Nowhere have I heard a discussion of what should happen here. Ideally, I'd assume, a senior enough law enforcement official would be at the scene in order to make a real decision about what should be done. Of course, such a senior person would also have the authority to say "Oh, wait, this is a false positive. The system has identified someone who isn't a threat.". And there's the rub - these two go hand in hand. Without the ability to weed out the false positives, the system is also guaranteed to fail to deal with a real threat. Making it easy for innocent people to clear themselves is critical to having the system work at all. It's not enough to identify the suspected threats - you have to eventually identify the real ones. -- - Adam ** Expert Technical Project and Business Management **** System Performance Analysis and Architecture ****** [ http://www.adamfields.com ] [ http://www.confabb.com ] ................ Latest Venture [ http://www.aquick.org/blog ] ............ Blog [ http://www.adamfields.com/resume.html ].. Experience [ http://www.flickr.com/photos/fields ] ... Photos [ http://www.aquicki.com/wiki ].............Wiki ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- more on EFF: American Travelers to Get Secret 'Risk Assessment' Scores David Farber (Dec 01)