Utah Senator Orrin Hatch
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) suggested Tuesday that people who download copyright materials from the Internet should have their computers automatically destroyed. But Hatch himself is using unlicensed software on his official website, which presumably would qualify his computer to be smoked by the system he proposes. The senator's site makes extensive use of a JavaScript menu system developed by Milonic Solutions, a software company based in the United Kingdom. The copyright-protected code has not been licensed for use on Hatch's website.
What Is Matrix?
More Nonsense Arising Out of The Patriot
Act Mentality
With the federal government having been effectively legislated and browbeaten
out of the data mining business for capturing terrorists the activity has
shifted to the states with Florida leading the way with a system called Matrix (Multistate
Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange).
Organizers said the system, dubbed Matrix, enables investigators to find
patterns and links among people and events faster than ever before, combining
police records with commercially available collections of personal information
about most American adults. It would let authorities, for instance, instantly
find the name and address of every brown-haired owner of a red Ford pickup truck
in a 20-mile radius of a suspicious event.
Some might see this as the triumph of federalism and the power of distributed
networks where no one single large entity is in charge. Some might even see this
as signs of the inevitability of as surveillance and data collection
technologies spread far and wide in society and people sitting at home are even
recruited to watch critical facilities remotely.
The database is being developed by a company called Seisint which already
markets a commercial database service called Accurint which is a database
service for locating people and past and present addresses.
Accurint uses a name, past address, phone number or Social Security Number to
obtain the current name, address and phone number of targeted subjects. Using
proprietary compilation of data sources and association algorithms, Accurint’s
ability to deliver high-quality matches and find rates is unparalleled. Accurint
can also provide previous addresses and location information for relatives,
associates, and neighbors. As a result, Accurint is the most accurate and
detailed source for forward-looking and historical views of consumer contact
information.
By leveraging unmatched capability for processing billions of records per
second, Accurint has compiled the world’s largest set of accessible location
data. Accurint searches more than 20 billion records that cover recent
relocation to historical addresses dating back 30 years and more. Individual
queries are supported via web and client applications. For high-volume requests,
Accurint provides on-demand batch capabilities, drastically reducing the cost of
searches. For direct legacy application access Accurint supports XML API's.
With its unique combination of data, association algorithms and search
technology, Accurint offers the best-performing solution in the marketplace.
Many companies have large databases of records of their transactions and
contacts with millions of people and organizations. It is not a big stretch to
use these databases to do data mining to look for activity that correlates with
patterns found in investigations of known terrorists.
Clearly grasping at straws the Cato Institute is peddling the idea that
automated systems of collection and analysis of information will drain resources
from more productive approaches to finding terrorists.
Florida's database is similar in many ways to the Pentagon's controversial
Terrorist Information Awareness program. In "Total Information Awareness for the
Ages," Clyde Wayne Crews Jr., director of technology policy, writes:
"Ironically, the project could also increase security risks. Even the Pentagon's
resources are limited: Most people are not terrorists, and it can be a costly
diversion to attempt to monitor the torrent of chatter that will be generated by
this misguided program. Terrorists already immerse themselves in mainstream
society, even using their real names and official government documents. They can
learn and anticipate the trigger patterns that will supposedly generate red
flags, and then avoid them."
The Florida project will simultaneously automate information searches for
commonplace police investigations and also bring together data that can be mined
to patterns of potential terrorist activity. As computers become cheaper and
more powerful and as communications costs fall as well the trend is clearly
running in the direction where computer automation becomes increasingly more
cost effective than traditional methods of police and intelligence work.
The Berkeley Intellectual Property Weblog is also worried.
But if each state collects and maintains citizen's data, each with different
standards for correcting, aggregating and using the data, and if states string
together their databases, as several states would like to collaborate with
Florida to do (Alabama, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana,
Michigan, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Utah so far
in the MATRIX -- click here for their contacts list; and the District of
Columbia and Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York in the DC program as
reported by Spencer S. Hsu/WDC Post), I think we will have a far more dispersed
and frightening problem than what the TIA proposed. Does this mean Safire, and
Harrow do another round of columns, Congress and (hopefully) State Legislatures
get involved to control this effort toward Too much surveillance (by Safire) of
citizens? How effective can we as citizens be in asking for legislative
oversight when there are so many different states and entities involved?
Things are spinning out of control? Woe is us? At the risk of sounding like I'm
playing a broken record, these worrywarts show little sign of being familiar
with science fiction writer David Brin's argument that the death of privacy is
inevitable and our only choice is whether only governments or everyone will use
the surveillance and data collection technologies which are continually
advancing in sophistication and ease of use. In Brin's view we effectively face
a choice between privacy and freedom. But those who scream loudest against
government surveillance and data collection seem wholly unaware of Brin's
analysis.
Click Here For A Deseret News Story About A Hearing
"Those who give up liberty for
the sake of security deserve neither"
Ben Franklin
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