Privacy? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Privacy
November 22nd, 2002 - 1:35 pm
I heard someone on the news yesterday — Rumsfeld? — try to cool worries about the Pentagon’s planned database. You know, the one that will record every single credit card purchase made by every single person in America.
Paraphrasing, he said that our fears are overblown. No one worries that banks and grocery stores and insurance companies already collect all this data.
Actually, some of us do worry about those little details. But what is left unsaid, is that banks and insurance companies don’t have guns or jails. The government does.
Shut down this project before it gets started.
I’m with you on this one. But my reasons were too long to put here.
Actually, all credit card transactions are *already* tracked – by the credit card companies. Visa’s customer database weighs in at around 4.5 terabytes. This is really about giving the government “backdoor” access to those existing databases, and many others besides.
Ditto. The combination of Dubya’s tiny brain and criminal indifference means that more tight-asses (i.e., Rumsfeld) are going to have more information to do more bad things….
Orwell, anyone?
I dunno. What is six-pack joe gonna have to worry about among these terabytes of data? I believe that whatever factors The Man chooses to sort by, they have to be outrageous on many criteria before any single person pops up, or He will have way too many to consider.
What am I missing? If the next Pres. wants to hit his enemies, he can sort them out by name with or without this, no?
BTW- Thanx for the yummy recipes.
Joe six-pack won’t have anything to worry about as long as he doesn’t do anything wrong. While we’re at it, let’s just put cameras in everybody’s homes. Yeah, the government’s constantly looking over your shoulder and putting the info in a national database, but the odds that it would be misused aren’t that big. Nice way to get around that pesky 4th amendment.
As a day-in-day out DBA, everytime I hear some half assed idea like this its makes me fall down in tears of derisive laughter.
I cant wait to see the data model on this sucker, everytime you run an open query on it, you’d dim the lights all over the east coast.
I know it sounds frightening, but seriously guys, this would be the worlds biggest depostory of garbage data the world has ever seen.
( ok, I might be a little biased, this thing would also be the equivalent of the full employment act for DBA’s and system adminstrators as well. )
From what I’ve read the problem with catching terrorists in the US isn’t so much that there isn’t data, but that we can’t sift through the data we have. And now they want to collect more data?
About the time I figured out what those grocery store discount cards were for (the second time I used one?) I decided that I would only use them to buy actual things on sale. I often do two transactions – the clerks don’t seem to mind. That way what my record says is: ‘cheap bastard’.
Honestly, though, this is nervous-making. I remember an Eastern European professor saying one time that only an American could develope good voice recognition without worry. All that kept the former Sovs from eavesdropping on EVERY conversation was that they had to have a human listener to each and every conversation they bothered to tape. He pointed out that good voice recognition would reduce the workload to manageable proportions, which might not be a good thing.
He advised speaking in metaphor.
Frank’s got it right. If you want to see what the flap’s really about, google ‘TIA’ at darpa.mil. It’s a f***in’ blue sky R&D project that’s handing out research contracts, not implementation. And it shows a touching faith in ‘big AI’ techniques that have heretofore caved every time they are faced with the ambiguity of real world problems like, let’s say, figuring out terrorist intent.
Even if they manage to deploy and load this mother of all DBs, you know what’ll happen? You’ll get the biggest list of bogus hits you ever saw. How come? There are lots of credit card deadbeats out there, hence, lots of sample data to figure out the statistical precusors to that behavior. Just how many samples do we have of proven terrorist behavior? Do you really want any more? And how ready have we been to use the already obvious correlations at, say, airport screening locations?
I’m not saying Poindexter is pure as the snow, or there might not be some ill intent at the top, but this isn’t the big bad wolf. This is a potential boondoggle blown up by donk-biased journos who haven’t a clue about how technology really gets put together. Please don’t feed those trolls.
I’m saying this as someone who was present at Poindexter’s talk at DARPATech in Anaheim, and who managed database research for a large US technology company for five years.
1. How will you all like it if Hillary Clinton got a hold of this data? Or another Richard Nixon?
2. I know dam well that the very bright and very sophisticated Terrorist Network will be able to flim flam any system. Fake credit cards used only once or twice, fake IDs, purchase for barter, etc. will just do what gun control does: hassel the innocent and the stupid.
3. We all lost a lot when Bob Barr lost in the Republican primary. He was a totally consistent defender of privacy and honesty in government who was demonized by the Clinton crowd. I have a hunch this thing could be a big issue for the Democrats next election.
the problem with petrabyte data warehouses is that getting intelligent and correct information from it is extremely difficult.
If the MAN is going to be launching preemptive investigations based on incorrect analysis of patterns in such large amounts of data, the argument “if you have nothing to hide, why worry” sounds hollow indeed.
When a supermarket chain fumbles market analysis of shopping habits and sends me coupons for gerber baby food and sells my neighbours address (the one with six kids) to a fertility clinic – these are more annoying than anything.
When feds launch preemptive investigations based on pattern analysis of even larger and diverse sets of data, that is dangerous and downright irresponsible. And the tempatation to see patterns where they do not exist, and the thrill of power that comes from it, will always remain an irresistble magnet for those in power
One thing that gets me is that the Feds will automatically treat with suspicion large cash withdrawals. Is every home buyer writing a check for a down payment on a house going to attract a federal investigation?
I think Suman meant “petabyte”, unless he was coining a new word having to do with growing data in a sterile environment.
I have to agree with Frank et al on this one. If you’ve ever tried to examine a decent-sized database (say, over a couple of hundred megabytes. Not saying this is BIG, mind you. Just big enough to be fairly opaque.) you’ll begin to appreciate the fine distinction between information and knowledge. And if you think the government is going to examine your records to the point where they know if you’re briefs or boxers (or, heaven forbid, thong) you overestimate the capability and inclination of the government to learn all there is to know about its third of a billion people.
That said, I have a real dislike for the selection of Pointexter in any capacity, any office.
The worry is, I think that the DoD is throwing huge amounts of R&D money at this project and, as with all technology puzzles, someone will think of how to get this done because of that money.
Go ahead, reread Orwell and worry.
Think what the next Joseph McCarthy is going to do with this data.
I’d think the name would be a dead giveaway.
Yeah and this is going to be sent over T-1′s.
The media is so freeling guible.
Mrs. Du Toit expands on Frank’s comment.
Alrighty then…I merely a DB student right now and even li’l o me can see the sheer mindboogleness of such a proposal. It won’t fly. Heavens, for close on 3 years the state of California did its damnedness to consolidate just the information on childsupport from all the counties within the state…and couldn’t make the system run..no matter how much they threatened and cajoled and tossed money by the truckload at it.
I’d like this project shelved…more from a practical standpoint than any other. Otherwise, I wish the nattering Orwellians would grow up and realize X-files was entertaining but fiction.
Let’s concentrate on getting the myriad of law enforcement agencies and their info shared.
I’d just like to chime in that Orwell’s Big Brother world was fiction, too. It just makes me cackle gleefully when some Lefty twit writes “Big Brother all over again” as part of their screed.
Then again, this could be the leading edge of a new, more powerful database tool. Or it could be, if it wasn’t for the government involvement.