FC: Weekly column: Ways to Poindexter-proof personal information

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

http://news.com.com/2010-1069-977908.html

   Perspective: Tech's answer to Big Brother
   By Declan McCullagh
   December 16, 2002, 4:00 AM PT

   WASHINGTON--Why is everyone so surprised that the U.S. government
   wants to create a Total Information Awareness database with details
   about everything you do?

   This is an unsurprising result of having so much information about our
   lives archived on the computers of our credit card companies, our
   banks, our health insurance companies and government agencies.

   Now a Defense Department agency is devising a way to link these
   different systems together to create a kind of digital alter ego of
   each of us. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, this proposed
   centralization was inevitable--and it's only going to get worse.

   Blame retired Admiral John Poindexter, national security adviser for
   former President Ronald Reagan, who returned to the Pentagon in
   February to run a creepy new agency that's trying to create this
   mammoth surveillance and information-analysis system. It's called
   Total Information Awareness, and it's funded by the Defense Advanced
   Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

   Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's a good idea, or that it's
   consistent with the traditional American values of limited government
   and a sharp demarcation between the private and the public sector. I'm
   not even sure if Poindexter's brainchild could ever work.

   What I am saying is that if our personal information--some of it
   extraordinarily sensitive--is archived in corporate or government
   databases and protected only by the weak shield of the law, it's
   vulnerable to federal snoops.

   [...]

   Technology offers a better way to preserve our rights against
   government overreaching. New crises may prompt Congress to vote
   unanimously to skewer the Bill of Rights. But technological
   protections don't vary with the whims of politicians or shifts in
   Supreme Court majorities.

   The sad thing is that for years we've known about technology that can
   slow down this mass "databasification" of American society. We just
   haven't used it.

   [...]




-------------------------------------------------------------------------
POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/
Recent CNET News.com articles: http://news.search.com/search?q=declan
-------------------------------------------------------------------------