Andrew Hagen

The ACLU has released a report entitled “Bigger Monster, Weaker Chains” that claims the type of totalitarian society warned against by Orwell in 1984 is within technological and political reach. (* PDF) A number of news reports have provided coverage based on the accompanying press release. (†) Instead of relying on the overworked press, however, it is worth reading the 18 pages of the actual report. It serves as a guide to this frightening new age.

The report attempts to draw the larger picture of where recent technological advances and political trends are converging. Between tiny radio transmitters coming soon to cans of soup, sneakers, and national identity cards, technological advances make possible the combination of private and public databases into one large, centralized database that would allow the government to know nearly all of every citizen’s daily activities. With information comes power.

Creating the prototype for this totalizing database is the object of the Information Awareness Office of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. (‡) DARPA has a track record of success. Among other achievements they created ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet. (§) The name of the database is the “Total Information Awareness (TIA) System” and it is supposed to provide the US government with an automatic warning for every terrorist attack that occurs anywhere in the world. (**) This is a ludicrously stupid and impossible goal that can in no way be achieved with any degree of technology so long as humans have freedom of individual action. The ACLU report rightly criticizes the pipe dream that would have us rely on computers to predict and prevent the results of free will. The ACLU gravely notes that the privacy-destroying achievements of such centralized databases will not be thrown away by the government. Instead, it will just go on collecting every scrap of information that it can. It bears noting that the TIA effort is led by the notorious, scheming, ruthless, convicted felon John Poindexter. TIA has begun to come under intense criticism. (††)

Thankfully, in the case of the TIA, a few Congressional representatives plan to introduce legislation to suspend the project. (‡‡) Russell Feingold, Senator from Wisconsin, is leading the effort. Suspending TIA is not going far enough. The program should be banned.

Even if TIA is ultimately banned, as the report shows, a twisted menagerie of other developments threaten to tear to shreds the traditional individual liberties sacrosanct to Anglo-American society. At a deep level, privacy is inimical to liberty. If a tyrant wishes to control you, he can only do that with the right information about you.

Ironically, while the Bush Administration presses ahead with programs that give the government unlimited knowledge of the citizens, such as with TIA, the Administration simultaneously presses ahead with programs that deprive the citizens knowledge of their government. This latter item is frequently referred to in the press as openness or secrecy in government. (§§)

What is really needed is one comprehensive law that bars all spying on citizens and unauthorized use of private information by the government, and then provides exceptions for narrow and specific circumstances, so that law enforcement and homeland security can be effective. Unless passage of comprehensive, protective legislation is quickly and unexpectedly forthcoming, it appears likely that privacy will be a signficant issue in the 2004 elections.

Update: 13 March 2003. Legislation denying funding to TIA has indeed been passed into law. (*** Public Law 108-7)

In a book review for the New Republic, Gregg Easterbrook writes bitterly about that class of automobiles known by the industrial acronym SUV, the Sport Utility Vehicle. (*) Easterbrook relates some of the myth-shattering points raised in Keith Bradsher’s book, High and Mighty: SUVs crash more than sedans; SUV passengers are more likely to die than sedan passengers; many SUVs are incapable of carrying or pulling more weight than sedans; SUVs are less maneuverable; SUVs have a higher center of gravity, leading to an increased chance of rolling over; SUVs are heavier and have inferior brakes compared to sedans, leading to longer stopping distances; and due to their larger size they worsen traffic jams. Of course, SUVs have poorer fuel efficiency, and pollute the air more than do other cars, as can be seen at the EPA’s online Green Vehicle Guide. (†)

Perhaps things are changing, however. Easterbrook notes that two years ago a US tariff was removed that had limited the extent of foreign competition in the SUV market. More competition and greater consumer demand for SUVs that are safer and cleaner should lead to an improved product. It would also be helpful if auto insurance companies were allowed to raise premiums for less safe classes of vehicles, which would include SUVs. The public policy ramifications of these vehicles will in any case be with us for years to come, from polluted skies to highway deaths to dependence on foreign oil.

The only thing that can reduce the marketshare of SUVs would be another oil shortage, such as that caused by OPEC in 1973. Today that seems highly unlikely. Of course, an oil shortage must have seemed just as unlikely in the 1950s and 1960s, when steel behemouths last ruled the road. The best outcome would be a significant improvement in the SUV product. An oil shortage would have the effect of a giant tax on consumers, and would thus be undesirable.

Update: NHTSA Administrator Jeffrey Runge has recently reaffirmed the agency’s committment to improving SUV safety. (‡) (§) Peter Valdes-Dapena looks into why SUVs are so unsafe for their passengers. (**) He finds that the SUV’s high ground clearance combines with its poor manueverability to make rollover crashes more likely. Such crashes are deadly. Single-vehicle rollovers accounted for over half of all SUV passenger deaths in 2000. Inexperienced drivers are likely to drive an SUV just as they would a car, but an SUV is not nearly so forgiving as a car when the driver makes sudden, sharp turns, as young, inexperienced drivers are wont to. In my opinion, a driver’s first car should not be a car of this type.

Writing in the New Yorker, John Lanchester finds wanting the particular genre of literature known as drug writing. (*) From Thomas De Quincey to Hunter Thompson, there have been few if any works of literary merit produced by writers under the influence of drugs, psychadelic or otherwise. Yet many writers and artists have made the extraordinary claim that drugs actually increase their ability to create art.

It seems impossible that drugs could aid a person’s creative ability, or, for that matter, capacity for rational thought. The best that could be hoped for is that drugs leave the taker’s capacities intact. The delusion and paranoia experienced by drug users is mimicked by their proclamations of a special, exclusive knowledge—a secret knowledge that somehow cannot be conveyed by language, but is only known to the drug user. In that this unknowable knowledge cannot be communicated, there is no reason to believe it exists.

Lanchester does give drugs a pass in that jazz and rock and roll have sometimes been produced under the influence of drugs, and therefore drugs must be helpful in music. This conclusion is highly questionable. While some such music, like that of Miles Davis, is innovative, the great jazz artists and rock and roll musicians have almost always failed to live up to their potential, and not just because many of their lives were shortened by drug overdoses. With the music talent of the last few decades, works of greater merit should have been produced. Of course, an album like Kind of Blue is a great work of art. It can be surpassed, however, and likely will be. Miles Davis would have reached higher heights of greatness without drugs.

Drug use is a cancer eating away at our society and civilization. Aside from the medicinal benefits of drugs like aspirin, there appears to be nothing at all of value in drugs. Unfortunately there are many today who cling to the ideology of this exclusive cult claiming knowledge of some secret unknown that only drug use can provide. In fact, the secret is out. Drugs not only do not work as advertised, but they also instill the illusion of usefulness.

Update: 13 March 2003. A recent study shows that the damage caused by drug use is lasting.

Problems with attention and motor skills persist a year after someone stops using cocaine and/or amphetamines, says a study in the March issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.

The Massachusetts General Hospital-led study included 50 pairs of male twins whose average age was 45.9. One of each pair of twins was a former heavy user of cocaine and/or amphetamines who had not used the drugs for at least a year before the start of the study.

All the twins were given a series of neuropsychological examinations to assess their attention, executive functioning, motor skills, intelligence and memory.

The twins who were former drug users performed significantly worse than their nonuser twins in the areas of motor skills and attention. However, the former drug users did much better on one test of attention that measured visual vigilance.

“Despite being abstinent for at least a year, abusers demonstrated neuropsychological impairments and selected advantages. These findings provide evidence of long-term residual effects of stimulant abuse,” the study authors write.

(†) The study only confirms again what was already known.