Information System Problems, Privacy and Government Regulation, Data Retention, Should Internet companies be required to keep track of what their customers are doing?

There are many other possible topics. The purpose of this meeting is to have a lot of interaction with the audience. You may have your own issues that you wish to have discussed. If you want them introduced for discussion at the meeting, Contact: Mike Walsh. You can also call him at (818) 785-5056, but email contacts are preferred. You are also welcome to just come to the meeting and add your comments from the floor.
prepared by Paul Schmidt
 

Mike Walsh started out with a quote from Newt Gingrich and some Electronic Freedom Foundation positions on these issues: Gingrich said:

"I want to talk about the genuine danger of terrorism, in particular terrorists using weapons of mass destruction and weapons of mass murder, nuclear and biological weapons.

"I want to suggest to you that right now we should be impaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision that we would never dream of if it weren't for the scale of threat.

"This is a serious long term war, and it will inevitably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country, that will lead us to learn how to close down every website that is dangerous, and it will lead us to a very severe approach to people who advocate the killing of Americans and advocate the use of nuclear or biological weapons.

"And, my prediction to you is that either before we lose a city, or if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from recruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to destroy their lives while destroying us.

"This is a serious problem that will lead to a serious debate about the first amendment, but I think that the national security threat of losing an American city to a nuclear weapon, or losing several million Americans to a biological attack is so real that we need to proactively, now, develop the appropriate rules of engagement.

"And, I further think that we should propose a Geneva convention for fighting terrorism which makes very clear that those who would fight outside the rules of law, those who would use weapons of mass destruction, and those who would target civilians are in fact subject to a totally different set of rules that allow us to protect civilization by defeating barbarism before it gains so much strength that it is truly horrendous.

"This is a sober topic, but I think it is a topic we need a national dialogue about, and we need to get ahead of the curve rather than wait until actually we literary lose a city which could literally happen within the next decade if we are unfortunate.

"So this is a very sober description of the Islamic terrorist threat we are faced with. We are NOW at war with a culture that wants, not to take over our land, but to KILL us."

I saw this quote in a right-wing email. I did a search, found that it was valid and that there were quite a number of outraged people who replied. One person seemed outraged that Gingrich had been given a platform by an organization favoring free speech to express his views. The right wing group claimed Newt's comments had created a "firestorm." Not true, they were mostly ignored.

The Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) did not bother to mention the speech when I did a search on Gingrich on their website. They are much more concerned about concrete efforts than editorial comment by politicians, especially those who are currently out of power.

Should Internet companies be required to keep track of what their customers are doing? Should the government classify massive numbers of travelers as potential threats based on their travel habits? Should warrant-less online data searches, surveillance of mail and data retention for later search by authorities be permitted?

The groundwork is being laid right now. The International Association of Chiefs of Police endorsed the concept of data retention in a resolution, and FBI director Robert Mueller applauded them a few hours later:

"Today, terrorists coordinate their plans cloaked in the anonymity of the Internet, as do violent sexual predators prowling chat rooms... Before we can catch these offenders, Internet service providers have unwittingly deleted the very records that would help us identify these offenders and protect future victims. We must find a balance between the legitimate need for privacy and law enforcement's clear need for access. Your resolution on records retention passed this morning will help put us on the right path."

Government Surveillance and Wire-Tapping – Is it necessary to stop terrorism? Should it be allowed without warrants? Are there technical considerations that influence the choices? We have discussed these issues before but they are still around and the government has different ideas than the ACLU and Electronic Freedom Foundation about what constitutes reasonable actions.

EFF Fights Huge Data-Mining Program Set for Rollout on U.S. Borders Washington, D.C. - An invasive and unprecedented data-mining system is set to be deployed on U.S. travelers Monday, despite substantial questions about Americans' privacy. In comments sent to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked the agency to delay the program's rollout until it makes more details available to the public and addresses critical privacy and due process concerns.

The Automated Targeting System (ATS) will create and assign "risk assessments" to tens of millions of citizens as they enter and leave the country. Individuals will have no way to access information about their "risk assessment" scores or to correct any false information about them. But once the assessment is made, the government will retain the information for 40 years -- as well as make it available to untold numbers of federal, state, local, and foreign agencies in addition to contractors, grantees, consultants, and others.

This is just an introductory sample of things that are being discussed and that are being done now. For myself, I have three questions and my view (but not knowledge) on the answers.

1. Is the threat presented by Gingrich real? (I think yes.)
2. Is extended surveillance necessary? (I think yes, and to a greater extent than the EFF wants.)
3. Do we need controls on the government agencies that are doing the surveillance? (I think yes, and to a greater extent than the current administration wants it.) Some of it isn’t all Republican. Under Clinton FBI director Freeh wanted greater authority to spy on American citizens and that was before 9-11.

There were remarks about a school teacher who was convicted of having a sexual relationship with a student and who was given an extra two years sentence because she sent a video of her dancing to the student over the Internet. The video was not objectionable and would have been a permissible exercise of her free speech in other contexts. It is feared that this could set a pattern for wider suppression of free speech on the Internet. There was a concern that heavy handed interrogations of American Muslims could have the opposite effect of creating opposition where it had not existed before.

There are some things that you think are bad enough that we could be headed for anarchy. Cultures that don't work together don't survive. People don't have a social view in our country anymore; things are driven by personal agendas.

For years we have had secret intelligence agencies but there has been a failure of information to get to the right places because of constraints that were imposed because of objections to past practices. There were reasons why these were imposed. In intelligence in the Air Force there were some zealots who didn't want to follow rules. Agencies didn't communicate with each other because they lacked trust that their information would be properly used.

There was a discussion about EFF positions and it was noted that EFF has given talks to LA ACM. They opposed the extension of copyrights. A lawyer, Larry Lessig, gave a talk on this and participated in the case all the way to the Supreme Court where they lost and copyrights were extended for their owners, including major corporations such as Disney.

There was a discussion about EFF's suit against AT&T for putting in taps so the government could use them to get information on American citizens and doing this without warrant. So far EFF has not won their suit, but their legal action is continuing. Most of the discussion was about how this was being done and no strong viewpoints were expressed. There is a huge amount of information being transferred and it is difficult for anyone to make sense out of it. There is quite a bit of possibility of making errors and improperly accusing people of wrongdoing. It was mentioned that NSA does a lot of this surveillance outside the US without any US legal restrictions, and in fact has a mission to do this. It is illegal for them to do the same thing to US citizens in this country. There have been comments by people opposing the accumulation and storage of vast amounts of data because they claim it is useless because so little of the data is relevant. This is not true; because once you actually identify a suspicious target tracking their past calls is extremely relevant. Some years ago the U.S. Navy taught personnel that protection of old codes was more important than the newest operational codes. If you find your current code is compromised you can stop using it, but old codes can be used to decrypt stored past traffic which can provide much important military information.

It was asked if the EFF was defending the stealing of intellectual property covered by copyright. It was mentioned that EFF was primarily interested in preventing the banning of technologies that had legitimate purposes other than stealing intellectual property. There was a discussion about individual uses of information for their own convenience and large scale distribution of things like songs. Napster lost in court eventually because the courts believed they were actively encouraging copyright violations. Another company that provided technology for file transmissions was not stopped by the courts because there are legitimate reasons for transmitting files from one person to another other than stealing intellectual property. This is a problem, because the attitude of major companies has been to try to make the technology completely illegal and ban its use entirely.

EFF has also been interested in election software. They were trying to get a congressional election in Florida over-turned because of errors, but it was reported that a state court has ruled against them. Their was a discussion about the problem of errors in recounts, that there can be errors in manual recounts. There is a problem where there is no way to recount votes on some of the election equipment because no "paper trail" record is maintained.

Myles Losch arrived and provided a call for proposals for the 17th conference on Computers, Freedom & Privacy that will be held in Montreal, May 1-4, 2007. US government agencies, including the FBI, have participated in these conferences in past years.

There was a discussion about cell phone tracking. This is an added convenience for some people but a method of tracking by investigators. Technology now allows the mass tracking of large numbers of users. Data retention laws will allow the back-tracking of individuals. This has aroused privacy concerns. Tracking by RFIDs has also created concerns. There was some conjecture about whether the government might require implanted RFIDs in people who were legally in the country, using the same technology used by some owners to keep track of their pets. British Petroleum has used ID cards with RFIDs and keeps track of their personnel using ultra-wide band communications for safety purposes in hazardous areas. The military has considered RFID for use in keeping track of soldiers on the battlefield.

The opinion was expressed that human intelligence by infiltrating terrorist organizations was used very effectively by the British in breaking up a plot against aircraft recently. The US has not been as successful in doing this.

There was a discussion about the government using secret directives to airlines that direct them to not let certain people fly. The EFF wants more exposure of how these procedures work and just how they decide to tag certain people as risks. Concern was expressed about the government claiming the right to arrest US citizens within the US and hold them as enemy combatants. There was a discussion about the government cooperating with AT&T to allow the tapping of phones. The EFF is suing AT&T for breaching the law. There has also been a claim by President Bush that indicated that under certain conditions U.S. mail could be opened without warrants outside of the current standards that are based on safety, suspicion of such things as explosive devices or biological agents.

There was no group consensus on the issues discussed. Everyone was concerned about the problem of tracking terrorist groups and government action being so widespread that it was impinging on people's normal expectation of privacy and violating current law and the U.S. Constitution. At least one person thought the government had good reasons for doing warrant-less wiretaps and needed more authority to do surveillance on US citizens than it currently has by law.

If you have strong views on some of these issues please email Mike Walsh at mp_walsh@acm.org and give us permission to publish your views. We don't promise to do so, that will depend on our editorial judgment and competition for space in DATA-LINK. If we do print them, we may edit them, especially if they are lengthy.

For information on the 17th CFP Conference:
    http://www.cfp2007.org

To reach the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF):
    http://www.eff.org

If you want to find out more about Newt Gingrich’s views:
    http://www.newt.org

This was the fifth meeting of the LA Chapter year and was attended by 9 persons. There will be another discussion group held on February 10, 2006 on jobs and the effects of globalism.
Mike Walsh, LA ACM Secretary