FC: Is Poindexter's TIA project not all that bad? By Stuart Taylor

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[I have a tremendous amount of respect for Stuart Taylor, and he is
correct to the extent he says that new laws will be required for
Poindexter's TIA plan to be (legally) operated, even putting
Constitutional questions aside.  He's also correct to imply that DARPA
and Poindexter will not be the folks who put the Total Information
Awareness program into operation. That would fall to the FBI, Secret
Service, or Homeland Security functionaries. But overlooking what
*could* happen if these conditions were met is simply naive, and I
suspect Stuart (often a contrarian) is taking his instincts too
far. Finally, calling Poindexter a "well-meaning patriot" is something
that I just can't buy. --Declan]

---

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/nj/taylor2002-12-10.htm.

The Atlantic Monthly

D.C. Dispatch | December 10, 2002

Legal Affairs
from National Journal

Big Brother and Another Overblown Privacy Scare
John Poindexter has no more power to compile a computer dossier on you than
I do
by Stuart Taylor Jr.

....

Editorial writers and other guardians of privacy have had a field day with
the reports that former Reagan National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter
has come back as a cross between Dr. Strangelove and Big Brother.
Poindexter is watching you, or soon will be, his detractors suggest, as
they lovingly detail his 1990 convictions (later reversed on appeal) for
his lies to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair. The Web site for
Poindexter's "Total Information Awareness" program at the Pentagon
foolishly fans such fears, featuring the slogan "Scientia Est
Potentia"-Knowledge Is Power-complete with an ominous, all-seeing eye atop
a pyramid.

Poindexter is "getting the 'data-mining' power to snoop on every public and
private act of every American," hyperventilated William Safire of The New
York Times, in a November 14 column that helped touch off a frenzy of
similar stuff. The Homeland Security Act, claimed Safire, would put
Poindexter in control of a vast government database, containing "every
purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy
and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit ... complaints
from nosy neighbors to the FBI," and much more.

Blather, nonsense, piffle, and flapdoodle. Poindexter has no more (and
probably less) power to compile a computer dossier on you than I do. He has
no more power to invade your privacy than the Pentagon procurement officer
for a new machine gun has to shoot you with it. He might like to create a
grand central database in which to fish through billions of transactions
and other records for clues on possible terrorists. But he got no such
authority from the homeland security bill and-given his Iran-Contra
baggage-he never will get it.

The job of the brainy, technologically adept Poindexter is to develop
technology, not set policy. He hopes (says his program's Web site) to
"revolutionize the ability of the United States to detect, classify, and
identify foreign terrorists-and decipher their plans." The goal-one to
which many privacy guardians seem stunningly indifferent-is to thwart
terrorist attacks and thus to save lives.

Poindexter is a high-level official of the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency, which helped create the Internet. His office is working on
what he calls a "prototype system," using "synthetic transactions" and
other, mostly simulated data to test the capacity of computer-based
pattern-recognition techniques known as "data-mining" to home in on people
who might be terrorists. His office vaguely acknowledges that it is already
providing technology to military intelligence agencies for use in analyzing
data these agencies have legally obtained. Because of the possible effect
on privacy of these current activities, and because any broader system
could ultimately work well only by continuously monitoring all of us-or at
least all foreigners-Congress should do some continuous monitoring of its
own and explore whether to strengthen protections such as the Privacy Act.

Underneath the flap about Poindexter, a well-meaning patriot cursed with
abysmal judgment, lie important questions that have been glossed over as
though inconsequential. How can we identify future Mohamed Attas before
they murder hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of us? What
kinds of data-mining might penetrate their plans before it is too late?
What exactly would be the risks to privacy, and how can we minimize them?
Might this be the only way "for us to survive as a civilization," as
Stanford University computer scientist Jeffrey Ullman suggested in an
interview with Salon's Farhad Manjoo?

[...]



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