You Are a Suspect

NY TIMES via Drudge ^ | william safire

[DAnconia55]

You Are a Suspect
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

ASHINGTON — If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you:
Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade your receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend — all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."

[Nuke'm Glowing]

Sorry about that, let's include the pertinent quote from your post#12....

"Right now terrorists are a real threat and it is necessary for government to adjust accordingly."

My response:

"In 1898, the Spanish-American War was created to prove our might. In the process an excise fee was created to pay for the cost. We are still paying for that fee 104 years later. Are you saying that anything the government does during a time of war is correct? If so, then that justifies the slaughter of millions of civilians by the Nazis according to your logic."

[dirtboy]

Actually under the proposal of the IAO, it does not require companies to submit to squat; it mandates open systems to warrantless government intrusions without court authorization.

Do you have the pertinent langauge on this? Plus, financial systems are screwed down pretty tight - it would take months, if not years, to create these backdoors.

In other words, you have to open your systems up with a back door to allow goons to sneak in and out at their desire. As an IT consultant (in the past) also, I can see what they want. Why spend billions on a "database" when you can mandate during "a time of war" that all systems be available to the fedgov without a warrant?

What's interesting is that this places the feds in violation of their own privacy laws. I'll look at this angle more.

They are only going to selectively create a database on the "undesirables" or "suspects".

Even that would be worthless, as they couldn't even figure out how to run a SQL query on the sniper database to figure out that a certain Caprice should be checked out.

Also they will probably change the data storage requirements on private companies so watch for another tick up on your credit card interest rate.

Actually, storage isn't that expensive any more. And I think corporations would raise an alarm on some of these matters.

It's brilliant. And damned evil.

Considering that they have already had to extend implementation of what seemed like a rather simple provision of the Patriot Act, I tend to count partially on government ineptitude as a protection here. But we also need to be vigilant. IMO Safire was partially off-base here, and DARPA is not what folks think, mainly because of inherent limitations of large databases. The real need is to go after warrantless searches of ANY kind, whether it is of someone's car or someone's credit card transactions at FDR.

[dirtboy]

Quit lying. The government is still required to get a judge's approval.

Can you provide a cite here?

[Nuke'm Glowing]

"Quit lying. The government is still required to get a judge's approval."

Tell that to the American citizen sitting in a Naval brig at the Virginia Beach Naval Station. Quit being an ostrich.

[Nuke'm Glowing]

I have to concur with you on Safire, he's an idiot. But the privacy laws are going to become somewhat "moot" IMHO, especially after the next series of attacks. I can see why DARPA was created and view their own website on this issue as a red flag. Obviously unless you are on the inside, you or I can not determine the true nature. But the public declarations of their goals and methods should be a wake up call. Will they know I purchased 20 gallons of gas tommorrow? Probably not. But if I purchased a ticket to Puerto Rico and/or bought 9mm ammunition; yes, I think they will have that flagged. I give them a lot of credit. I did not in the past, thus my concern.

P.S. - Just what the hell is "Truth Maintenance"???????????????????

[dirtboy]

In other words, you have to open your systems up with a back door to allow goons to sneak in and out at their desire.

Let's say for a moment that the fedgov did obtain this power. OK, they're in the back door of my company. What do they do?

Oops, the data they need is at ten different vendors. Gotta go there too. Oops, need a login. And a password. Is it running Oracle, Teradata, or DB2? Teradata?!? Cripes, Fred is our only Teradata guy and he's on vacation. Where is the metadata and the data dictionary? Man, I can't figure out these field naming conventions.

And that's just ONE system. To do the kind of modelling the feds would need to combine data from countless systems. OK, so they'll just work with the largest companies. So the terrorists will just get a card from a small bank or credit union, or just start paying cash more often.

[88keys]

There is no way they can honestly debate something this gargantuan. I’ll bet half of them haven’t even read the bill in its entirety. I am to the point where I think we should require a comprehensive test on each bill before they vote so we can ensure they have, at least read the damn thing!

I'm in absolute agreement with that!

Furthermore, there are some untrustworthies who will indeed slip things into an "omnibus"-type bill, as well as others who mean well but are sloppy in wording and lay it open to "judicial activism"...

(but I still think if Safire is going to go on about it, he should have done us all a favor, scrutinized the bill, and if he's got the facts, gone to the Congress who's actually going to vote on it, instead of writing a "scare-mongering" column...) ;)

[dirtboy]

But the public declarations of their goals and methods should be a wake up call. Will they know I purchased 20 gallons of gas tommorrow? Probably not. But if I purchased a ticket to Puerto Rico and/or bought 9mm ammunition; yes, I think they will have that flagged.

You have no idea how complex that will be. I work in two buildings filled with very bright people working on just that. If we had a model that was sophisticated enough to find 18 terrorists in this country, we'd be rich. Heck, we celebrate if we get miniscule increases in a miniscule response rate with an improved model. Modelling the way the feds envision would be like trying to pick up a china cup with a backhoe.

[Nuke'm Glowing]

The pertinent language is somewhat "governese"....

* Collaboration and sharing over TCP/IP networks across agency boundaries
* Large, distributed repositories with dynamic schemas that can be changed interactively by users
* Foreign language machine translation and speech recognition
* Biometric signatures of humans
* Real time learning, pattern matching and anomalous pattern detection
* Entity extraction from natural language text * Human network analysis and behavior model building engines
* Event prediction and capability development model building engines
* Structured argumentation and evidential reasoning
* Story telling, change detection, and truth maintenance
* Business rules sub-systems for access control and process management
* Biologically inspired algorithms for agent control
* Other aids for human cognition and human reasoning



"Even that would be worthless, as they couldn't even figure out how to run a SQL query on the sniper database to figure out that a certain Caprice should be checked out."

I have to call you on this one. The "LEOs" used their own profilers to make that call. This was a prejudice which no system could anticipate or correct.

"Actually, storage isn't that expensive any more. And I think corporations would raise an alarm on some of these matters."

I doubt they would. This gives them the free "pass" to increase fees on the users justifying it as part of the "war on terrorism". I can see the tradeoff here, IMHO. I have to agree with you. The goal is a warrantless search, then if some nugget is turned up, request the warrant for specific purposes to give it the veil of legality. The sheeple would be happy and the politicos can brag about how they saved the U.S.

[Nuke'm Glowing]

I tend to think that there will be one mandated data format and system format coming out of this in the long term....

[dirtboy]

P.S. - Just what the hell is "Truth Maintenance"???????????????????

It sounds sinister, but it's a knowledge systems term, nothing Orwellian about it:

Truth maintenance system (TMS)

A truth maintenance system is a mechanism whereby a knowledge based system can keep reasonably consistent and truthful as its knowledge changes. For example, if facts have been added to the KB through inference based on a set of premises, and one of the premises is later removed from the KB, any conclusion that depends on that premise should also be removed from the KB. The Cyc® TMS relies on the fact that each assertion has its support recorded in the datastructure.

[dirtboy]

I tend to think that there will be one mandated data format and system format coming out of this in the long term....

Fat chance. Recall the fiasco when the feds attempted to mandate the Clipper chip.

[Nuke'm Glowing]

LOL, I agree about the "model" concept. However mandating that all companies doing business in the U.S. notify the fedgov of patterns or actual purchases would be a simple solution...make the private sector do the work in other words! You and I will have guranteed employment for 20 plus years.

[John Lenin]

It's all part of the big plan. If they take away cash, than we should start to worry.

[Free the USA]

I still have no clue as to how that is supposed to relate.

[Nuke'm Glowing]

Since my knowledge about TMS has just improved about 100% I appreciate that. But once again, what prevents the fedgov from implementing a top-down restructuring of all systems mandating one type of storage, etc. It would be a bonus for MS and IBM if you ask me...

[antidisestablishment]

You are wrong. The type of schema that are being discussed (mandated actually) cannot work without access to all, or at least a substantial amount of (innocent) records.

It could be likened to impressionist art: sometimes you need to see the big picture before the constituent parts and patterns make sense.

[dirtboy]

Here is where I believe you are being led astray:

* Collaboration and sharing over TCP/IP networks across agency boundaries
* Large, distributed repositories with dynamic schemas that can be changed interactively by users

I saw this section, and interpreted it to be high-level standards for systems WITHIN THE PROPOSED DEPARTMENT - not upon corporations.

I have to call you on this one. The "LEOs" used their own profilers to make that call. This was a prejudice which no system could anticipate or correct.

I have to call you in return. The bias of users is one of the greatest potential failure points for any system.

[Stand Watch Listen]

Sure, they'll be rolled back as soon as the war(s) is(are) over. I have a lot of confidence that the folks in charge know what they're doing.

Hmmmmm...now I wonder if the 'war on terror' is not over for some years. And the 'folks in charge' are NOT in office, what happens then?

Very few laws have a sunshine/repeal provision written into them. A Democrat Administration could utilize this 'knowledge' with severe consequences. (reference is made to 1993-2001 ie IRS, FBI etc).

[Deb]

Only the statement by Ashcroft. It must be somewhere around here.