The coming totalitarian awareness of information.
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)