FC: Response to Dow Jones's Know Your Customer, USA Patriot database

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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From: "Thomas Leavitt" <thomasleavitt () hotmail com>
To: declan () well com
Cc: tschure () worldpress org, achasan () worldpress org
Subject: Re: FC: Dow Jones releases Know Your Customer, USA Patriot database
Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 11:44:02 -0700

Declan,

I am profoundly astonished. Is turning one's reporters into private 
investigators common practice among the journalism industry?

Does Dow Jones not realize how profoundly dangerous this is to the 
journalistic integrity of these enterprises, and to the physical well being 
of its reporters? As a reader of World Press Review, I'm constantly 
reminded that journalists world wide face danger every day from corrupt 
bureaucrats, rogue businessmen and criminal figures, and politicians angry 
that their machinations and manipulations of the public are being exposed 
and challenged. One of the constant themes of these attackers is that 
journalists are a tool of foreign powers, that they are spies on behalf of 
international powers... this database is making that literally true (in a 
sense).

As a journalist, are you comfortable with the idea that your work would be 
compiled in such a fashion? That every time you name a figure, or place 
them in context, it is going to be picked up by your employer (or a third 
party) and put into a database, and that some individual other than 
yourself, the sum total of whose knowledge comes from your article and god 
only knows what else, is going to be making factual and speculative 
connections so that they can mark the place of those you interview in the 
political/social landscape?

Perhaps most of the people you interview (or attempt to) are going to be 
ignorant of Factiva... but somehow, I doubt it. Wouldn't you be worried, as 
a journalist, that your sources are going to be ever more careful and 
selective about when they talk to you, and what they say, on and off the 
record?

And which journalists are going to pay most heavily? Is the world going to 
even notice when some corrupt bureaucrat order the security service to 
break down the door of a local newspaper and arrest the editor (or just 
shoot him where he sits) because some bank refused to do business with him, 
and the only news coverage of note on that bureaucrat has come from the 
local press? What effect is this going to have on the ability of the local 
press to scoop international media?

I know that if I were that bureaucrat, my suspicion of the press would be 
redoubled, especially of those members associated with Dow Jones and 
Reuters, after hearing of this.

Further, even were I an honest bureaucrat or politician, I would be 
concerned... there is a profound potential for abuse. I can see a newly 
triumphant dictator making use of this to track down and eliminate all 
associates of the former regime or his political opponents, or a network of 
guerillas or terrorists using it to identify targets for assassination or 
kidnapping? If I were the FARC or Al-Qaida, for example, this might be a 
useful means for double checking internal intelligence on potential targets 
of opportunity - and I'm certain that in these vast bureaucracies, there 
are a few FARC or Al-Qaida sympathizers.

That a database of this sort exists is perhaps inevitable, and probably 
beyond the scope of any imaginable regulation, both in a practical and 
ethical sense, but that such a database would be compiled and distributed 
by a media/news organization is not, and is profoundly disturbing.

Regards,
Thomas Leavitt




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