HomeSec Blacklist to be Available to Private Companies 315
unassimilatible writes "The Washington Times reports that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are developing a database that will allow private companies to submit lists of individuals to be screened for a connection to terrorism. The database will eventually allow private-sector entities, such as operators of critical infrastructure facilities or organizers of large events, to submit a list of persons associated with those events to the U.S. government to be screened for any nexus to terrorism. All of this won't be cheap either; total terror-related IT spending by US federal and state governments will run past $100 billion in 2004. But don't feel left out Europeans, since the EU is considering a terror database as well, although France and UK are reluctant to share intel."
Easy to abuse.. but not a new list anyway. (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, this list has been around for ages, and has been circulated among financial institutions for years. It's not really anything new, it's just more public now.
Re:Easy to abuse.. but not a new list anyway. (Score:2, Interesting)
How much do you have to pay to get your favorite "friend " listed ?
Re:Easy to abuse.. but not a new list anyway. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Easy to abuse.. but not a new list anyway. (Score:5, Funny)
As humorous as it is to think of the FBI being discrete (not continuous?):
s/discrete/discreet/g
Re:Easy to abuse.. but not a new list anyway. (Score:4, Insightful)
> organizations, who are generally well funded, may
> be able to check associates against the list and
> verify they are not listed.?
yes, that's one of the problems with it.
another problem is "what is the definition of a terrorist?", and the related issue of "who gets to decide?"
will, say, greenpeace be classified as a terrorist organisation because they "cause economic harm" to US interests? what level of dissent, membership of which political and/or protest organisations will cause someone to be classified as a terrorist?
(this is not as ridiculous as it sounds - i've already heard several oil & forestry industry representatives refer stridently to environmental activists as "terrorists")
what happens to an individual who is a member of so-called terrorist organisations like Greenpeace or the Sierra Club or some other moderate activist group? will they be able to get a job? will they be able to buy a plane ticket or a train ticket? will they be able to go to public events, e.g. purchase tickets to a concert? will they be refused a bank account because the govt checks says "Yes -- they are associated with terrorist groups"?
say goodbye to the right to dissent. going, going....gone.
Re:Easy to abuse.. but not a new list anyway. (Score:5, Interesting)
No it is not such a bad question because some groups such as Earth First, some of the anti-abortion activists and some anti-vivisectionists crossed the line long ago. Earth First does things which are very likely to kill people, like spike trees.
There certainly are radical terrorists who champion those causes, the problem is that the line is usually abused. The current UK foreign secretary was under MI5 surveillance when he was a student. So Blair's number one man in the war on terra was once on a blacklist.
I have seen this happen personally in the UK. A group associated with the UK conservative party called the Economic League [guardian.co.uk] maintained a blacklist of 'left wing sympathizers' that they sold to an undisclosed list of employers. I got listed for saying that there was no way I was going to have anything to do with any group that used those tactics. In case people are wondering how privately educated sons of the establishment like myself turn on the tory party like I did, well that was the Damascus moment for me.
You can easily verify this claim further with a small amount of Googling. The list itself collapsed in irrelevance after Bob Maxwell bought a copy and set up a stand at the Labour party conference. There were more Tories on it than left wing radicals. They used to list each other when they got into faction fights.
Given the treatment meeted out to Richard Clarke in the past few days, there is no way that John Ashcroft or George Bush can be trusted with such a power. They are now talking of selectively declassifying intelligence for the sole purpose of being able to punish Clarke with a specious perjury prosecution. They went after Wilson by illegally uncovering the fact that his wife was a covert CIA operative. The continued to threaten O'Niel with prosecutions even after it was admitted that the Whitehouse had cleared all his documents for release.
And you know what? At this point I'm not really sure that Ashcroft's excuse for holding Padilla without indictment or trial is going to turn out to be valid when we find out what it is.
In the past few days Bush has shown more energy and passion in his efforts to crush Clarke than he ever has in his pro-forma attempts to track down and eliminate al Qaeda. I simply cannot believe that any other major party candidate in that race on either side would not have invaded Afghanistan to destroy al Qaeda and stayed there focused on that single task until it was complete. Forbes, Keyes, Gore, Bradley, I can't believe a single one would not have invaded (they would have been impeached anyway so it would not matter) and I can't believe any other candidate would have finished the job.
Re:Easy to abuse.. but not a new list anyway. (Score:3, Insightful)
There can also be time factors involved. e.g. The US was quite happy with Bin Laden and co when they were attacking the USSR in Afghanistan. The definition the US Government uses means that "friends" are never "terrorists". (But they can be if they stop being "friends".)
Re:Easy to abuse.. but not a new list anyway. (Score:5, Interesting)
What this all means is they can't tell terrorists that they're on the list. As such, they would probably have to give false reports of innocence to people who were on the list and did a background check on themselves.
You'll never know you're on their list. It's difficult to find out if you're being watched now, anyways. For example, if your phone was being tapped, the phone company and law enforcement won't let you know you're being watched. And they don't tell you that you're not being watched. They just won't tell you anything. Just the same, you would never be able to find out if you're on the list or you're not.
Re:Easy to abuse.. but not a new list anyway. (Score:4, Insightful)
They won't release the list, but if you can watch the use of the list you can figure out who is on it by who gets hassled. If they don't do extra checks based on the list it's not going to stop you from flying with a bomb and won't inconvenience you much.
But the whole idea is pretty lame. Criminals use fake ID. The current crop of religious idiots also uses suicide bombers who only have to sneak past security once, the first and last time.
Do You Remember? (Score:5, Insightful)
The one where you joked about blowing something up, poisoning the town watersupply or leaving a flaming bag of poop on the mayor's doorstep? It was just a youthful indiscretion, which anyone could make after a few beers or a blunt. It wasn't meant to be taken seriously. There were not pipe bombs under your bed or fatigues and a gun in your closet. You'd rather be shooting the shit with friends at the mall than shooting people from the trunk of a parked car. Years pass and you have met that special someone and settled down to a mortgage, a couple auto loans, putting some money away for college funds and that sporty little red "mid-life crisis" Then one day you're called into the Human Resources department. There are a couple serious looking men in suits waiting there to meet you. It seems on a routine check your name came up. You had started or participated in a thread that someone else did. That someone else just blew up a bus in Tel Aviv.
Remember that off-the-cuff troll you fired off on some blog or newsgroup years ago? Someone did.
Re:Do You Remember? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Do You Remember? (Score:5, Interesting)
Years ago, when I lived in the home city of a large multi-national corporation, there was a Green Peace protest. A few GP folk set up shop in town to protest various past and/or present activities of the giant. Seems a local sheriff and the corporation shared some intelligence information while investigating these people. Who they were, who the were known to sleep with, what they ate, etc. A serious gaffe. Heads rolled (probably a few just for appearances) and Green Peace brought their lawyers in (who are no strangers to this sort of thing.) Suits filed, etc. Terribly ugly stuff.
That was then, 20 years ago or so. Now business and government are unabashed about doing something like this. How far we've come.
It gets worse (Score:5, Interesting)
Woah, dude, relax! (Score:2)
Re:Do You Remember? (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other side, we have people wielding Orwell. Big Brother is watching you, the government is evil and corrupt, you can't take a piss off-center without a dozen people knowing about it. Here's a hypothetical story I made up, complete with a series of lottery-scale unlikely events, leading to a conclusion that mostly just serves make you scared of your own shadow. That's my evidence.
It really sucks to be caught in the middle of those camps. One of these days I'm just going to tear off into the woods and live Thoreau-style, because it seems like the radicals are the only people having fun these days.
Re:Do You Remember? (Score:2, Redundant)
It CAN happen here. Because it HAS happened here. (Score:5, Informative)
Rent a clue.
The Orwellian scenarios sound like a bunch of pipe-dreaming by paranoids to you because they haven't happened to you.
Yet.
But trust me. They do happen. They happen a lot.
They've happened to me. They've happened to lots of my friends. They've happened to my wife. They've happened to a number of our ancestors. (On her side, at least one per generation for the last three, and that's just counting the ones on the DIRECT line.)
They happened to opposition political figures big time, over and over. Not just in countries "over there" - but right here at home. (Look up the FBI's "COINTELPRO" just for starters.) Every twenty years or so the stuff that happened twenty years back comes to light. And the story is always the same: "That was THEN. That COULDN'T happen NOW." And twenty years later you find out that it WAS happening now, too.
j'accuse is alive and well, as is stereotyping, as is guilt-by-association, and so on.
The conspiracy-theory tinfoil-hat stereotype is VERY convenient for the people who are actually running such operations. It discredits their victims's cries for help, as well as the warnings of those who haven't yet been vicitmized (as far as they can tell) but who understand the dynamics and can thus read the writing on the wall.
The biggest trouble with these things is that, by the time they come for YOU, it's too late. So you have to head them off while they're still being formed up, or still going after just the genuine scumbags (and the people the operators honestly mistake for genuine scumbags), rather than waiting until the machine is well oiled, armored, and compeletely out of control.
Re:It CAN happen here. Because it HAS happened her (Score:3, Interesting)
Then make your own choices and take your chances with the fallout from them. Just don't expect me to take the consequences of your choices, too.
And don't say I didn't warn you.
We wouldn't have to rent a clue if you'd provide some real indication that you were offering us one for free. Please provide us that indication. I, for one, would like to get it right.
What you appear to be doing is asking me to identify myself, my family, my friends, and my acquaintences, on
Re:Do You Remember? (Score:3, Interesting)
There is probably a database of people who do so, at least if they are as thorough as the police in Switzerland during the cold war. Apart from members of leftwing parties and environmentalists, etc. they also had a special file with all dairymen and shepherds in the mountains. There were of course "harmless" people in Alpine dairies, which had g
Re:Do You Remember? (Score:3, Funny)
I should be okay, I'm not much for huge dark sunglasses or hoodies. My vanity will keep me on the Light side.
RE: Snipers... (Score:3, Interesting)
"...and wounding civilians in Miami, Florida and Washington, DC using paramilitary sniper teams."
Operation Northwoods is a 1962 plan of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff concocted to justify a US military response in Cuba. Among other wonderful things, the US Special Forces would arrange for two-and-three-man "freelance" sniper teams to roam and randomly shoot people at will in order to cause panic and permit t
What I am really afraid of...... (Score:5, Insightful)
What I am worried about is the government collecting and keeping this data. They may just be using this program as a honeypot to get companies to give them data. They get to know your location on a precise time and date. They also may be able to do some basic hypothesising based on this data. For instance, people who are often found at the same events could be grouped together, and rudimentary sosical networks could be strung together. You could end up under investigation if you turn up at too many events that have "terrorist suspects" at them. Maybe even if they started collecting names of those at political rallies, and started adding those to the databases. Maybe the cities will say: You can have your protest, if you supply a list of names of people who will be there. And BAM! You have lost your privacy and freedom to associate.
Re:What I am really afraid of...... (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps, although doing so would be a clear violation of the first amendment's freedom of assembly. I know people will cite the Patriot Act as an example that the government doesn't give a damn about the Constitution. On the other hand, I don't recall any real limitations on freedom of speech (okay, not giving expert advice to terrorists, but the courts struck that part of the Patriot Act down). They've been unwilling so far to touch the first amendment.
They get to know your location on a precise time and date.
Don't forget while you're there to only pay in plain cash. If you use a credit card or a check, then they'll know you were there either. Since this seems to only be used for events, many of the people will probably be buying things with their credit cards. In other words, I don't know that for most people, they'll be getting tracked more than they already are.
Maybe even if they started collecting names of those at political rallies, and started adding those to the databases.
For the most part, I don't see this happening. Both parties have been involved with the Patriot Act and with taking your rights away. Quite frankly, I think they don't want the election system associated with blacklists. It could quite easily backfire, and I'm sure that the opponents of the people in office who passed the Patriot Act would spin it as an attempt to scare voters into voting the incumbent back in.
Re:What I am really afraid of...... (Score:2)
Yeah, but I think that the people who would be allowed to participate in the program will want to cooperate (for the most part). Thus, they will ma
Re:What I am really afraid of...... (Score:5, Insightful)
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Cities already require their advance approval of any demonstration. They have their own criteria what can be allowed and what cannot. I don't see anything in the 1st amendment that can keep them from requiring organizers and attendants lists to check against terrorist databases to the list of their criteria.
Nothing of the sort is happening. In fact, Bush and Ashcroft are proud of having passed the US PATRIOT Act and regard it as a plus in their fight against terrorism. Needless to say, most people are blind to principles and could care less if the government is able to listen into their telephone conversations with their friends without a warrant, or tap into their OnStar or a similar device to track them or listen to their in-car conversations. Or detain suspects for extended periods of time, if not forever, without charging them with anything, giving them access to a lawyer, family, etc. All they do is talk to family and friends over the phone and drive kids around anyway - they have nothing to hide; do you? Principles go down the drain when government uses scare tactics.
You are making it sound like it's OK to violate the Constitution as long as you don't violate the 1st amendment. The US PATRIOT Act and government's actions based thereon, violate 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th amendments, among other things. i.e., courts will uphold the 1st amendment, but not care at all about others? How is this justified?
freedom of speach limit (Score:2)
Very limited if you are within 60 days of an election. Course some will argue that it is fair, it keeps those "evil special interests" from advertising and influencing an election. However it is still a limit on freedom of speach.
Re:What I am really afraid of...... (Score:3, Informative)
Don't forget while you're there to only pay in plain cash. If you use a credit card or a check, then they'll know you were there either.
Don't forget to take the battery out of your cell phone. Otherwise it will tell them (about every five minutes if they don't explicitly ask it for more reports), exactly where you are.
Re:What I am really afraid of...... (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps you should read about the governments response to an antiwar conference at Drake Univertsity after which a few people committed an act of peaceful civil disobedience. The DOJ swept in and wanted to know everyone who attended and everything that was said, they placed a gag order on the Univertisty prohibiting the University from telling anyone about the massive investigation because they wanted to ke
I hope they give us similar rights as with credit (Score:3, Interesting)
I hate the idea, but I am curious to see what they have on file for me.
Re:I hope they give us similar rights as with cred (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I hope they give us similar rights as with cred (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I hope they give us similar rights as with cred (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing.
But they just started one.
KFG
Re:I hope they give us similar rights as with cred (Score:2)
Operatives? (Score:2)
Got it backwards, chief (Score:3, Informative)
It's not like Coca-coka is gonna be getting dirt from you by calling up the feds.
Re:Got it backwards, chief (Score:4, Funny)
You're right, Coca-Cola mostly deals with the CIA.
Re:Got it backwards, chief (Score:2)
You joke, but have you seen this film [imdb.com]? It's about a coke marketer who travels to Australia, and then sends out for a bag full of machine guns...well it's worth seeing.
I always thought that the whole film it was a veiled reference to alleged CIA involvement in this event [whitlamdismissal.com].
Re:Got it backwards, chief (Score:2)
I don't think so, read that again. It says:
The conventional interpretation of that language would be the same as if you submitted peoples names for drug screening, or credit checks. The submitte
movie industry "Reds" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:movie industry "Reds" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:movie industry "Reds" (Score:5, Informative)
It basically started when the president of the Screen Actor's Guild at the time, an over-the-hill actor named Ronald Reagan, decided to get on the good side of the House Committee on Un-American Activies by volunteering to turn over to them the names of all the people that he suspected of having Communist tendencies in the film industry.
The willingness of this actor to be a total asshole and his enthusiasm in destroying the lives of the other actors that he was supposed to be defending as SAG president caught the attention of the dormant conservative Republicans, who financed his California governor's race in the mid 1960's.
Re:movie industry "Reds" (Score:2)
Re:movie industry "Reds" (Score:2)
Re:movie industry "Reds" (Score:2)
Constitutional freedoms do apply to everyone in the United States. It's what makes them morally superior to the Stalinists and the Muslims.
There are many shades of political opinion among the left and progressive peoples at that time. The monstrous crimes of Stalin were not generally known until Khrushchev's denounciation of Stalin in 1956 and the publication of Solshenetizn's 'Gulag' books in the early 1970's.
Sharing Intel is like sharing needles! (Score:3, Funny)
I know how that is! I'm an AMD guy myself, and "Friends don't let friends use Intel."
Re:Sharing Intel is like sharing needles! (Score:3, Funny)
>
> I know how that is! I'm an AMD guy myself, and "Friends don't let friends use Intel."
"When you run SETI@Home on an Athlon, you hunt for aliens with Osama! Only the paranoid survive!"
- Andy Grove
Anti-globalisation peeps are next. (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at it this way: they are going to rate people the same way good spam-filters rate incoming email to determine if they are spam. They'll probably be more right than wrong - but heaven help you if you fall through the cracks. No ability to fly. No ability to attend large gatherings. The ability to literally clip the wings of dissenting voices becomes a heck of lot easier.
Lets look at who gets access:
operators of critical infrastructure facilities - with the right lobbyist this could mean just about any large corporation. Microsoft would certainly qualify. Would about Coke? Ford motor company? Nike? They keep America financially strong - and what's good for Microsoft is good for American by golly!
organizers of large events - such as political conventions? Concerts with bands whose message may contain material not suitable for fundamentalist ears?
Re:Anti-globalisation peeps are next. (Score:2)
and you just made the list
Re:Anti-globalisation peeps are next. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a misdirected search for self-confidence, relevance, and meaning disguising itself as paranoia.
The so-called "anti-globalization" drummings of a few highly-motivated but ultimately uninformed marchers is neither as significant, nor as threating to "the man" as to warrant the kind of Gestapo tactics you're talking about.
But it feeds the egos of those involved to imagine that but for the presence of shadowy conspiracies and underhanded tactics, their "movement" would take over the world, instead of just leaving a bunch of litter on Main street and giving the nightly news a few seconds of colorful video to run.
Trust me. You're safe. Hold your marches.
The people don't care about you, and the government doesn't see you as an existential threat, just an occasional traffic control problem.
Safe? Excuse me? (Score:5, Interesting)
Reality doesnt gibe with your charactarization.
You say:
"The so-called "anti-globalization" drummings of a few highly-motivated but ultimately uninformed marchers is neither as significant, nor as threating to "the man" as to warrant the kind of Gestapo tactics you're talking about."
You are wrong and here are my facts to support it. You may or may not be aware of this but during the Miami Free Trade summit they really did use Gestapo tactics and the "the man" certainly felt that the event was threatening.
Here are just a few highlights from the FT summit in Miami:
- Use of undercover "snatch squads". There were groups of plainclothes officers who mingled with the crowd to arrest people without warning.
- Reporters with the corporate news sources were kept behind police lines. Reporters were decked out in full riot gear, like embedded journalists in a war zone.
- Independant journalists, and particularly indymedia reporters, were frequently arrested, or had their video cameras, film, and notepads seized.
- Even the permitted labor march did not escape harassment, as the police turned away several busses full of retired union members from the Alliance of Retired Americans who were trying to travel to the march.
The federal government gave the city of Miami $8.5 million for "anti-terrorism" security at the talks, as part of an $87 billion appropriations bill for the rebuilding of Iraq.Now let me be clear. They used money for the war in Iraq to quash protesters in Miami. I'm a reasonable person and I'm concerned. What on earth makes you think they wouldnt use a system like the one described here to monitor folks with such political views?
Re:As (not) seen on TV (Score:3, Insightful)
To me, this link proves little or nothing.
Some of these "protesters" don't know the difference between the right to peaceable assembly and run-amok vandalism.
Read the reports there. The "protesters" say that they came "to shut down" a private facility, based on some kind of tenuous logic linking it to military efforts of which they did not approve.
One of the marchers refers to himself as part of a group of "reinforcements" meant to attack a particular gate. Union dock workers, according to another one of
Can we say McCarthyism? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can we say McCarthyism? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Can we say McCarthyism? (Score:3, Funny)
In other words, truly an American icon.
Britain (Score:2)
The U.K. and France have cooperated in recent years, though, for instance on the U.N. security council (they're 2 of the 5 permanant members with veto power, with the U.S., Russia, and China, I believe), and they usually vote together (for instance, recent decision to issue a statement about Israel's assassination of Palestenian HAMAS leaders - I believe the vo
Re:Britain (Score:2, Informative)
In the EU, but not using the Euro.
Re:Britain (Score:2)
As a nation, we love the hand outs the EU gives us, we love the trade rules the EU gives us (most of the time, the fishing industry disagrees, but then when dont they?). We also love all the o
You'd be amazed at how loose procedures are (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:You'd be amazed at how loose procedures are (Score:2)
Re:You'd be amazed at how loose procedures are (Score:2)
Happy, happy, joy, joy (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy (Score:3, Insightful)
Organizations don't always get along like happy families. I can easily see people getting put on a list because they pissed someone off or they rub someone the wrong way. Anyone that has a huge ego (including CEOs) might use it as a way to get people on their own personal enemy list in trouble.
History Repeating Itself (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't believe something like this could come to existance so soon after the whole McCarthy communism scandal. People will be able to submit lists of people and find out if any of them are Filthy Reds
Woody Allen's The Front just become recommended viewing for the entire nation.
George Orwell (Score:5, Interesting)
"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."
"In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia."
"Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink."
"The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history."
and, probably my favorite one,
"Winston Churchill could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been at war."
Just thought I'd share...
Re:George Orwell (Score:2, Funny)
Are you sure you didn't mean Winston Smith?
(I assume you're referring to the novel 1984 [newspeak.com], and not the former UK politician. I mean, Sir Churchill was quite a smart man and would probably be able to remember the time between the wars he served in and the wars he led
Brainfart (Score:2)
As a matter of fact, I was just sitting in my backyard, writing down some miscellaneous thoughts when I saw the article (ah, the beauty of 802.11b networking :) and found some of the quotes I had highlighted surprisingly fitting. For some reason, I must have been thinking about Churchill (I've always wanted to read Jenkin's take on Churchill).
Anyway, thank you for point this out. :)
Re:George Orwell (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.orwell.ru/ [orwell.ru]
David Nelsons (Score:5, Interesting)
11:05 am and you won't serve me breakfast? (Score:2)
A whole lotta cash (Score:2)
Re:A whole lotta cash (Score:3, Funny)
It's hard to outsource it overseas, too.
From Bad Debt to Terrorism: You are the loser (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine a similar scenario with your terror file. You neighbour gets pissed off with you and goes and complains about you. She says you have been hanging out with a bearded people. You have made a business trip to Saudi Arabia.
And that's all it takes. Now you are are terrorist on the FBI terror list. You will never get clearance. You will never get a government job other than cleaning public toilets.
If this measure goes through, you will never get clearance to get a job at a private company either.
One mistake, by someone else, and you are out.
Thank god I am not in the land of the free!
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let's start on it for them (Score:2, Funny)
Holy freaking *censored*!! (Score:2)
Great (Score:3, Interesting)
"Well Ms. Jones, you're a very strong candidate and we'd like to hire you, but Homeland Security says you gave money to Earth First! at a fundraiser in 1992. We've offered the position to somebody else. Good luck."
Worse than that (Score:4, Interesting)
Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it looks like the world is becoming a better place every day.
If terror = schoolbooks (Score:4, Insightful)
No Child left behind simply means everyone is left behind since it is easier hobble the quick than train the slow
Well, that's comforting... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's nice to know that much of the querying will be done by private organizations, and not just the government. Non-government organizations are so much more trustworthy and reliable. Phew. What a relief.
And if you didn't catch the sarcasm, think of the damage that people can currently cause with our existing system in the form of identity theft. Now immagine a parallel system being used to determine how much of a threat you pose to society. Now when you apply for housing in an appartment, they not only call your references, but check this database to see if they should worry about you bombing the place or something absurd like that. Great.
That's a lot of power, by the way. And claims that it will be accurate and reliable only worsen the situation. People wouldn't take such a database seriously if it contained a lot of mistakes. The only reason why you can correct your credit report at all is because there are so many publicised inaccuracies. But if such a database managed to be some 99.95% accurate, or something like that... boy does it suck to be one of the thousands of people who got got an undeserved "black mark" on your record. No one would ever believe you, it would be completely impossible for you to correct it--not because you can't prove you're innocent, but because there's no one you can go to to get it fixed. Everyone believes the database because it's always right. You get turned down for loans, housing, jobs, and can't even travel. Such a database may even wind up admissable in court.
Now immagine the position of those who can anonymously input information into that database (and there will be many). That's too much power, with no accountability. A recipe for a silent disaster. Of course, you'll never hear about it, that's the nature of the thing. The only ones who will know are the abusers and the victims. Wow.
Accuracy (Score:2)
After all it is going to be farmed out to some corporation somewhere and they're not going to be required to maintain any particular kind of accuracy. (I think there was a slashdot story to that effect recently but I can't find it.)
Our best hope is that it will be possible for everyone to add information to it so we can overwhelm it with nonsense.
Re:Well, that's comforting... (Score:5, Insightful)
If it managed to be that good, it would be a miracle. But still, 0.05(260)10^6=13,000,000 people who are on the list, but aren't terrorists.
Just to make things worse, it doesn't have to be anywhere near that good, as long as people think it's that good. As you pointed out, if people believe it's infallible, they'll drag their own mother out of the nursing home and pack her off to jail when she shows up on the list.
Even if the false positives are far rarer than you proposed, there will still be too many. If good folks are excluded with 99.999% accuracy, that's still 2,600 false positives.
That's the problem of false positives, and it's a serious problem indeed. The problem of false negatives might be even worse. If people (especially law enforcement people) believe that this database has essentially all terrorists in it, we will be less safe with the data base than without.
Say that there are only half a million terrorists in the world; people who are willing and able to do something like the murders in Spain, or the murders on 9/11. On no particular evidence, I think that's a low estimate.
The 9/11 murders seem to have taken less than 50 people to plan and execute. If the database contains 99.99% of the 500,000 genuine terrorists, that leaves 50 who aren't in the database, and can procede freely, because the police effort is being wasted on the 13,499,950 people in the database. That number in the data base is the 0.05% who are wrongly suspected in the U.S., and the 99.99% of terrorists who are rightly suspected.
Even if there are only 2,600 false positives at any given moment, that still dilutes law enforcement efforts. More seriously, law enforcement is quite likely to believe that all they have to do is watch the ones they know about, and they'll be easily blindsided by the ones they haven't yet found. The mess at Columbine highschool a few years ago shows that the only way to stop all murders is to lock up every one. We'd better lock up the cops too ... some of them might go bad.
I'd say that all we can accomplish with this sort of thing (except making things difficult for the current administration's detractors[1]) is provide some excellent cover for hundreds of really dangerous terrorists, at the expense of everyone's freedom.
[1] Every administration in modern times has been accused, with considerable justification, of abusing the FBI and IRS to that end.
Intel (Score:3, Funny)
I didn't know Intel was France or the UK's to share
Let me be the first (Score:2)
$100B ??? (Score:2)
Get blacklisted, loose your career (Score:3, Insightful)
Hell, you wont even be able to flip burgers at the local burger-doodle to support your family.
Expect a lot of criminals to be created by this.
Next stop, 1984...
4, 5, and 6, all down the drain (Score:5, Insightful)
All this AND the government makes money off of it! It's a win-win scenario!
Why the panic? (Score:3, Insightful)
They seem to eventually evolve to near-panic as hints of rationality get applied.
Why can't they start out rational and lead to a well supported factual basis to make a decision?
Is is a slashdot problem or is everyone incapable of cool-headed, reality-based decision making?
ugh, More Carnival Barkers (Score:3, Insightful)
France & Britain (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting to note that the main law [www.cnil.fr] (1978) was passed under Giscard D'Estaing - a moderate republican, by U.S. standards.
Re:France & Britain (Score:3, Informative)
OK - so maybe dog pound supervisor is perhaps hyperbole, but the list of people able to access your information does extend as far as, for example, any local authority, any health s
An example of gov't keeping us safe (Score:5, Informative)
A few months ago, I applied for and received a job as a network engineer at the Pentagon. One of the job requirements was that I had to get a "Secret" security clearance. The company hired me after I told them I was eligible for such a clearance. I started working there while the oh-so sensible and efficient federal government did a background check on me. Two months later, they turned me down, saying that I was a risk to national security because I had my name legally changed thirteen years ago. I therefore lost my job six weeks ago because I went thru a perfectly legal (and public) process that meant nothing more than that I didn't have to have my asshole father's last name anymore. This in spite of the fact that others have received Secret clearances -- and even Top Secret clearances -- after having histories of drug use, mental illness, and even prison sentences, among other things.
This is the same government that says it's going to protect us from Yamir Shitzak blowing us up in the name of Allah. Do you feel any safer? 'Cuz I sure as hell don't.
Re:An example of gov't keeping us safe (Score:5, Insightful)
McCarthyism (Score:3, Insightful)
Thank you George Bush Junior for pushing us back into one of the worst chapters of recent American History.
The damage this will do...
Please, study history so we don't repeat it. I wasn't any good at it in school, but I've seen enough repeats in my years to know it's worth learning and remembering.
117 (Score:3, Informative)
Now, 3. What's that? Approximately the number of people who die each day due to terrorist attacks.
Let me ask, where's the problem here? I absolutely am not belittling September 11th (in fact, I feel people who call it 'nine-eleven' are the ones doing just that), but there are obviously problems causing more deaths. My uncle lost his best friend that day, and nearly his own life -- he had a meeting in the North Tower at the World Trade Center, but he missed his train that day, and was late. However three people in my school died in automobile accidents in the last three years.
Oh, yeah. Don't forget, the auto number doesn't include the nearly 1500 a day severly injured in an accident. I won't even start on smoking...
I think the money's headed in the wrong direction....
My advice: stop being afraid (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do I bother posting this? Am I drunk? No. I want to encourage you to consider your civil responsibility/duty to keep America sane: encourage your fellow Americans to relax. Don't get so wound up; don't reach for your gun. Let's get the population calmed down... turn OFF the TV news channel, go outside and get some fresh air, and think sensibly about what kind of America you want to live in.
I'll wager that you want your country to be strong and free. So do I! If everyone can calm down a bit, we can avoid doing some stupid things that are going to hurt Freedom.
Ahem Ashcroft and Pres Bush (Score:3, Insightful)
Why should us tax payers pay for an ineffecive boondoggle?
Re:More RAM anyone? (Score:2)
Re:Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)
that and "keywording" resumes pretty much makes the whole H.R. system crap.
Re:Wow, that's a surprise. (Score:2, Insightful)
Realize the truth in your jest -- there's about a fifty fifty chance, guessing from news about leaks this year alone, that the newly aggregated data
a) will be compromised and fall into enemy hands due to bad IT security practices, or,
b) sold or lent to third parties or government contractors
c) used for purposes other than originally intended
or d) all of the above
Re:Obligatory Alarmist Post (Score:2)