Be afraid.
Sep. 23rd, 2002 08:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpFrom Wired News:
What about the privacy implications? Says Shay: "When it is done in the commercial world, it is known as customer resource management. When it is done by the government, it's an invasion of privacy," he said. "To move forward in a positive way, that's something we're going to collectively have to get over."
It would be a lot easier to collectively get over this process of "moving forward" if such such companies were to be held liable for errors in their system, and if the lives of their managers were to be forfeited in case any terrorists do manage to board a plane. (This would not prevent terrorists from doing so, but it would liquidate an embarrasingly smug, stupid, and greedy segment of the population.)
More, from the Wired News article:
I got a letter the other day from the Social Security Administration. Inside, they told me what I could expect, moneywise, when I retire. They took great pains to keep my SSN confidential (in case the letter were to fall into the Wrong Hands, I suppose), and exhorted me to "protect my Social Security Number!"
Who are these people trying to kid? My SSN was my student ID number back in college, my service number in the Marines, and has been provided to so many different agencies, employers, potential employers, banks, etc. as to make the idea of "protecting" my SSN (i.e., keeping it secret) beyond laughable.
And yet, the original intent of the number was, simply, to be an account number with the Social Security Administration.
Another example: A local restauranteur here in Pagosa was arrested a while back for DUI. It turns out that if you hold a liquor license in this state and are so arrested, your liquor license is summarily yanked, along with whatever happens to you otherwise. The restaurant, which was more of a bar than an eatery, closed. Was this what was intended back when liquor licensing laws (or even DUI laws) were first envisioned?
This kind of punishment is not unique: revocation of, for example, the professional licenses of those deemed "deadbeat" parents for child support payments is a standard sanction in some states (bringing back the glory days of the debtor's prisons, where your ability to make a living was taken away until you coughed up owed money).
Another example (talking about deadbeat parents): A woman came into the shop some time ago and asked me to wordsmith a letter for her. Her Federal Tax refund, you see, had been seized by the State of Hawaii for failure to pay child support. She had written them, explaining that she had never had any children, and that they must've made a mistake, but got no reply. (I wrote a somewhat more direct letter for her that suggested the situation might be newsworthy. The refund came by return mail, but I digress...)
I can see where a CAPPS III system could be extended to, say, gas stations, which would swipe your license through a terminal every time you stopped to buy gas. In addition to keeping tabs on where you are (and where you are going), the system would also be dandy for making sure that nobody with an expired license, a revoked license, no insurance, any felony warrants, etc. would be driving around. Imagine, we could also keep track of sex offenders, drug dealers, suspects in general,... you get the picture.
And of course, all of this would be done in the name of the "war on terror."
Be very afraid.
Cheers...
The Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II (CAPPS II) is designed to scan multiple public and private databases for information on individuals traveling into and out of the United States. The system will feed the results to an analysis application that mathematically ranks travelers' potential as security threats.I'm sure this is going to be a powerful deterrent to any terrorist contemplating mayhem while in the air. Of course, the people who are selling the concept to the government insist it will work. "It could be very effective" in identifying potentially dangerous passengers, according to Allen Shay, president of Teradata, a data warehousing division of NCR Corp (from an article in Federal Computer Week).
What about the privacy implications? Says Shay: "When it is done in the commercial world, it is known as customer resource management. When it is done by the government, it's an invasion of privacy," he said. "To move forward in a positive way, that's something we're going to collectively have to get over."
It would be a lot easier to collectively get over this process of "moving forward" if such such companies were to be held liable for errors in their system, and if the lives of their managers were to be forfeited in case any terrorists do manage to board a plane. (This would not prevent terrorists from doing so, but it would liquidate an embarrasingly smug, stupid, and greedy segment of the population.)
More, from the Wired News article:
Though the [Transportation Security Administration] has stated that people whose records are pockmarked with unpaid parking tickets, unfiled tax returns and overdue child-support payments have nothing to fear from CAPPS II when trying to fly from point A to point B, civil liberties advocates aren't so sure.And the civil libertarians'd be right.
I got a letter the other day from the Social Security Administration. Inside, they told me what I could expect, moneywise, when I retire. They took great pains to keep my SSN confidential (in case the letter were to fall into the Wrong Hands, I suppose), and exhorted me to "protect my Social Security Number!"
Who are these people trying to kid? My SSN was my student ID number back in college, my service number in the Marines, and has been provided to so many different agencies, employers, potential employers, banks, etc. as to make the idea of "protecting" my SSN (i.e., keeping it secret) beyond laughable.
And yet, the original intent of the number was, simply, to be an account number with the Social Security Administration.
Another example: A local restauranteur here in Pagosa was arrested a while back for DUI. It turns out that if you hold a liquor license in this state and are so arrested, your liquor license is summarily yanked, along with whatever happens to you otherwise. The restaurant, which was more of a bar than an eatery, closed. Was this what was intended back when liquor licensing laws (or even DUI laws) were first envisioned?
This kind of punishment is not unique: revocation of, for example, the professional licenses of those deemed "deadbeat" parents for child support payments is a standard sanction in some states (bringing back the glory days of the debtor's prisons, where your ability to make a living was taken away until you coughed up owed money).
Another example (talking about deadbeat parents): A woman came into the shop some time ago and asked me to wordsmith a letter for her. Her Federal Tax refund, you see, had been seized by the State of Hawaii for failure to pay child support. She had written them, explaining that she had never had any children, and that they must've made a mistake, but got no reply. (I wrote a somewhat more direct letter for her that suggested the situation might be newsworthy. The refund came by return mail, but I digress...)
I can see where a CAPPS III system could be extended to, say, gas stations, which would swipe your license through a terminal every time you stopped to buy gas. In addition to keeping tabs on where you are (and where you are going), the system would also be dandy for making sure that nobody with an expired license, a revoked license, no insurance, any felony warrants, etc. would be driving around. Imagine, we could also keep track of sex offenders, drug dealers, suspects in general,... you get the picture.
And of course, all of this would be done in the name of the "war on terror."
Be very afraid.
Cheers...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2002-09-23 07:15 am (UTC)I'd suggest that errors in the system would add up to significant loss in profits... assuming the individual companies had a say in how strongly they decided to adhear to the suggestions of the system based on their own opinions of the quality of results returned.
False positives means turning away customers, while false negatives would mean losing customers over concerns brought on by another disaster.
no subject
Date: 2002-09-23 07:46 am (UTC)unfortunately, it won't work - USSR in last years has had the same problem (mean attempts to build even more sofisticated bureaucracy system to cope with groving bureaucracy), and it didn't help.
a good reading on the issue of mechanical control over people is classical russian writer Kuprin (http://kuprin.de/english.htm) story "Mechanical justice" (http://kuprin.de/engl_jurisprudence.pdf)
http://kuprin.de/mechpravsudie.pdf
http://kuprin.de/russian.htm
no subject
Date: 2002-09-23 09:42 am (UTC)However, from the tone of your reply I think that perhaps you don't quite see where I'm going with my approach.
I'm talking about a simpler bureaucracy, not a more complex one. Ideally the government wouldn't be involved at all. I would suggest letting the airlines have access to the informaiton they think they need (ok, governmental safeguards could protect the data from misuse). The airlines have a vested intrest in getting more people to the planes by both not tagging too many as potential terrorists and also preventing crashes, avoiding huge PR problems. I then say "here's information, now you figure out who's who."
There are a couple of obvious problems with this statement, but that's my approach in a nutshell. There is LESS bureaucracy, though, not more. I am also completely opposed to the curent action of putting governmental employees at the security counters in the airports, replacing the airline employees and creating another level of bureaucracy, ineffectually in my opinion.
Feel free to disagree, I almost do :)
no subject
Date: 2002-09-23 11:29 am (UTC)Historically, centralization of control works poorly, if at all (e.g., the economy of the Soviet Union, which one might argue survived as long as it did because of pandemic finagling). Too, the reactions of most governments to threats like terrorism has been to centralize power and restrict the actions of citizens (e.g., UK in Palestine in the late 40s, France in Algeria in the 60s, and so on), with predictable consequences (the insurgents win).
I agree with Theroux that the only path to salvation lies in privatization and radical decentralization of power. Arm the pilots. Hell, expand the sky marshal program to include anyone without a criminal background and who has been properly trained along the lines of a military reservist to pack a concealed weapon on an aircraft.
Unfortunately, nobody is interested in decentralization. Loads of people seem to fall into apoplectic fits when anyone suggests arming pilots. (I don't think I've seen the second alternative ever even mentioned. I suspect some people who firmly believe only the government - and by implication, criminals - ought to have guns would probably need medical aid to recover from the shock.)
Cheers...
no subject
Date: 2002-09-23 12:34 pm (UTC)Cheers...
Sounds familiar
Date: 2002-09-23 08:29 am (UTC)Land of the Free.
Re: Sounds familiar
Date: 2002-09-23 09:03 am (UTC)you ought to see it as free massage from govt people ;)
Re: Sounds familiar
Date: 2002-09-23 09:49 am (UTC)Re: Sounds familiar
Date: 2002-09-23 11:31 am (UTC)Seriously, while that never happened to me, I did notice (with my previous passport) that every time I returned to the U.S., the immigration control person would swipe my passport and then do a double-take when my data came up on their screen. The third time this happened, I asked, "Is there a problem?" and the answer was a curt "No."
Don't ask. Don't tell.
Cheers...
Re: Sounds familiar
Date: 2002-09-23 11:45 am (UTC)