Essays in the Category "Privacy and Surveillance"
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US-VISIT Is No Bargain
In the wake of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s awarding of its largest contract, for a system to fingerprint and to keep tabs on foreign visitors in the United States, it makes sense to evaluate our country’s response to terrorism. Are we getting good value for all the money that we’re spending?
US-VISIT is a government program to help identify the 23 million foreigners who visit the United States every year. It includes capturing fingerprints and taking photographs of all the visitors and building a database to store all this data. Citizens of 27 countries, mostly in Europe, who don’t need a visa to enter the United States are exempt. And visitors from those countries are expected to have passports with biometric data encoded on them in a few years…
Curb Electronic Surveillance Abuses
As technological monitoring grows more prevalent, court supervision is crucial
Years ago, surveillance meant trench-coated detectives following people down streets.
Today’s detectives are more likely to be sitting in front of a computer, and the surveillance is electronic. It’s cheaper, easier and safer. But it’s also much more prone to abuse. In the world of cheap and easy surveillance, a warrant provides citizens with vital security against a more powerful police.
Warrants are guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment and are required before the police can search your home or eavesdrop on your telephone calls. But what other forms of search and surveillance are covered by warrants is still unclear…
Better get used to routine loss of personal privacy
At a gas station in British Columbia, two employees installed a camera in the ceiling in front of an ATM machine. They recorded thousands of people as they typed in their PIN numbers. Combined with a false front on the ATM that recorded account numbers from the cards, the pair were able to steal millions before they were caught.
In at least 14 Kinko’s copy shops in New York City, Juju Jiang installed keystroke loggers on the rentable computers. For over a year he eavesdropped on people, capturing more than 450 user names and passwords and using them to access and open bank accounts online…
Terror Profiles by Computers Are Ineffective
In September 2002, JetBlue Airways secretly turned over data about 1.5 million of its passengers to a company called Torch Concepts, under contract with the Department of Defense.
Torch Concepts merged this data with Social Security numbers, home addresses, income levels and automobile records that it purchased from another company, Acxiom Corp. All this was to test an automatic profiling system to automatically give each person a terrorist threat ranking.
Many JetBlue customers feel angry and betrayed that their data was shared without their consent. JetBlue’s privacy policy clearly states that “the financial and personal information collected on this site is not shared with any third parties.” Several lawsuits against JetBlue are pending. CAPPS II is the new system designed to profile air passengers—a system that would eventually single out certain passengers for extra screening and other passengers who would not be permitted to fly. After this incident, Congress has delayed the entire CAPPS II air passenger profiling system pending further review…
Protecting Privacy and Liberty
The events of 11 September offer a rare chance to rethink public security.
Appalled by the events of 11 September, many Americans have declared so loudly that they are willing to give up civil liberties in the name of security that this trade-off seems to be a fait accompli. Article after article in the popular media debates the ‘balance’ of privacy and security—are various types of increase in security worth the consequent losses to privacy and civil liberty? Rarely do I see discussion about whether this linkage is valid.
Security and privacy are not two sides of an equation. This association is simplistic and largely fallacious. The best ways to increase security are not at the expense of privacy and liberty. Giving airline pilots firearms, reinforcing cockpit doors, better authentication of airport maintenance workers, armed air marshals travelling on flights and teaching flight attendants karate are all examples of suggested security measures that have no effect on individual privacy or liberties…
High-Tech Government Snooping: Anti-Crime or Orwell Revisited?
Good news! The federal government respects and is working to protect your privacy… just as long as you don’t want privacy from the government itself.
In April 1994, the Clinton administration, cleaning up old business from the Bush administration, introduced a new cryptography initiative that ensures the government’s ability to conduct electronic surveillance. The first fruit of this initiative is CLIPPER, designed to secure telephone communications.
CLIPPER is a tamper-resistant chip designed by the National Security Agency, a super-secret branch of the Department of Defense…
Clipper Gives Big Brother Far Too Much Power
In April, the Clinton administration, cleaning up business left over from the Bush administration, introduced a cryptography initiative that gives government the ability to conduct electronic surveillance. The first fruit of this initiative is Clipper, a National Security Agency (NSA)-designed, tamper-resistant VLSI chip. The stated purpose of this chip is to secure telecommunications.
Clipper uses a classified encryption algorithm. Each Clipper chip has a special key, not needed for messages, that is used only to encrypt a copy of each user’s message key. Anyone who knows the key can decrypt wiretapped communications protected with this chip. The claim is that only the government will know this key and will use it only when authorized to do so by a court…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.