Privacy vs Security: Examining the Debate on TIA Systems

[Hurkyl]

In reality, people have to enter the data, and other people have to interpret what the computer spits out.

The data has already been entered. E.G. the credit card companies have all ready entered your credit card info, the hospitals have all ready entered your medical records, et cetera.


AFAIK, what the computer actually spits out hasn't been decided. Sure it could be "Jane Doe is a terrorist. Kill her", but then again all it might do is e-mail police stations and give them a list of things that may constitute probable cause for which the police could then confirm and submit to a judge to get a warrant issued.

And one of the big issues the TIA project is planning to research is to vastly strengthen the ability to track accesses, so improper use could be detected (possibly automatically).

Hurkyl

 

[schwarzchildradius]

Two cases seem probable- a very select few have access to the TIA information, which is scary for obvious reasons (those people will not be representative of the interests of the public); the second case, further into the future, is that the information becomes public through hacking or other compromise, which will completely end privacy. Even extremist conservatives are against TIA. But I wonder, would a TIA system prevent 9-11 attacks?

 

[Zero]

Originally posted by Hurkyl
The data has already been entered. E.G. the credit card companies have all ready entered your credit card info, the hospitals have all ready entered your medical records, et cetera.


AFAIK, what the computer actually spits out hasn't been decided. Sure it could be "Jane Doe is a terrorist. Kill her", but then again all it might do is e-mail police stations and give them a list of things that may constitute probable cause for which the police could then confirm and submit to a judge to get a warrant issued.

And one of the big issues the TIA project is planning to research is to vastly strengthen the ability to track accesses, so improper use could be detected (possibly automatically).

Hurkyl

Hmmmm...what information would constitute 'probable cause'? And how would you prevent some government body from deciding that some group should be harassed, and use this to find minor infractions to press them on?

 

[Dissident Dan]

One big repository for information on all US citizens sounds like a recipe for disaster. It's an identity thief's dream. Any insider who wants to spy on his enemies/competition has a great opportunity. It would be an excellent tool for our government, should they take a turn for the worse and try to control our lives even more. I don't see how any advocate of less government, as most Republicans claim to be, could support such a measure.

 

[Hurkyl]

I don't see how any advocate of less government, as most Republicans claim to be, could support such a measure.

Because good data mining algorithms can function as a strong work multiplier. It is not unreasonable to expect that a classification algorithm could place 75% of the worthwhile data into the 25% highest rated records, thus tripling the effectiveness of the agents that work with that type of data.

 

[schwarzchildradius]

But why would you expect it to have stopped terrorism? The INS issued student visas to what was it 6 or so of the 9-11 hijackers, after the fact. If you're making the argument that better software in general will help, that's certain, but computer networks tend to be leaky somewhere, and you're talking about a lot of people who have to have data access at some point. I see 2 big disadvantages.

 

[Dissident Dan]

Originally posted by Hurkyl
Because good data mining algorithms can function as a strong work multiplier. It is not unreasonable to expect that a classification algorithm could place 75% of the worthwhile data into the 25% highest rated records, thus tripling the effectiveness of the agents that work with that type of data.

Ah, I suppose that that could reduce the amount of employees, if we could trust the government's intentions. However, I was thinking of bigger government as being more intrusive, more omnipresent.