Clock to tick down U.S. privacy

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20070918/NATION/109180049/1002

A "Surveillance Society Clock" created by the American Civil  
Liberties Union
will symbolize the encroachment of government spying on private  
citizens as
part of the war against terrorism - and the ticktock is fast approaching
midnight.

"The extinction of privacy is a real possibility," said Barry  
Steinhardt,
director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Project. "We believe that
privacy is not yet dead - it is a patient on life support."

The online clock is patterned after the "Doomsday Clock," created by the
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947 to warn against a nuclear
holocaust. Midnight symbolized a total "1984"-style "surveillance  
society."

"Every generation deserves its own clock," Mr. Steinhardt said in a
teleconference yesterday announcing the project and a new report on mass
surveillance by the government.

He said that an explosive increase in new technology and data mining is
fueling the trend and creating a false sense of security - from  
satellites
to national-identity systems, the National Security Agency's warrantless
surveillance program, DNA data-banking and Web search engines that store
every query, even satellites.

"The false security of a surveillance society threatens to turn our  
country
into a place where individuals are constantly susceptible to being  
trapped
by data errors or misinterpretations, illegal use of information by  
rogue
government workers, abuses by political leaders - or perhaps most
insidiously, expanded legal uses of information for all kinds of new
purposes," the report says.

"We are far too close to the midnight of a genuine surveillance  
society, and
the second hand has not stopped sweeping around the dial," the report  
says.

The "surveillance" clock, a digital display viewable from the ACLU's Web
site, is now set at six minutes before midnight. The ACLU says it  
will be
updated as events warrant moving the time closer or further away from a
"surveillance society."

...


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