Big Brother isn’t just watching. He’s making biometric databases, recruiting firefighters and redefining “privacy.â€
There’s been a lot going on in terms of government surveillance and privacy concerns. Here’s a few highlights:
- Do you look like a terrorist? The FBI is spending $1 billion create the biggest biometric database in the world. That means the feds are gathering people’s physical characteristics, everything from iris pattern to gait, in hopes of identifying “terrorists.†According to The Washington Post:
If all goes as planned, a police officer making a traffic stop or a border agent at an airport could run a 10-fingerprint check on a suspect and within seconds know if the person is on a database of the most wanted criminals and terrorists. An analyst could take palm prints lifted from a crime scene and run them against the expanded database. Intelligence agents could exchange biometric information worldwide.
There are two very big dangers here. The first is mistaken identity (it’s hard enough clearing up an error on a phone bill, imagine how hard it would be to clear up a “terrorist†label in government databases). The second is intentionally putting people on lists and in databases. The government would like everyone to believe this would only be used against “evil-doers,†but as we’ve seen, animal rights and environmental advocates have intentionally been listed as the “number one domestic terrorist threat.â€
- Over in the UK, animal rights activists have become the first people ordered by the court to turn over PGP keys. Police seized computers during home raids, and can’t seem to unlock the data without the passwords.
Many of you have probably heard of PGP, an email encryption program that that has become popular worldwide with business execs, attorneys, and even grassroots activists. For a while I used the program and had my “public key” on this site, so activists can email me their stories securely.
PGP isn’t (or shouldn’t be) used to encrypt emails that talk about illegal activity. That’s not the point. The purpose is to have a bit of privacy in an age of identity theft, government spying and a bigger Big Brother. Well, surprise surprise, the government doesn’t like that very much.
- A U.S. court, however, ruled that a man charged with transporting child pornography can’t be forced to divulge his PGP passphrase.
- The Department of Homeland Security wants firefighters to snoop around for “terrorist†activity while on the job. (Check out the video from Raw Story at the top.) Way to go, DHS, trying to turn a trusted, respected occupation into a mini spy program. Besides the civil liberties concerns here, it’s a major public safety risk. If people have to worry that they might have something “suspicious†in their home, it could deter people from calling 911.
Remember, DHS already tried to deputize truckers as terrorist scouts. Who is next, paramedics?
- Hushmail, an email provider that boasts “not even a Hushmail employee with access to our servers can read your encrypted e-mail,” turned over encrypted data to the Feds.
- And the FBI is using MySpace to place spyware on computers.
- But don’t worry about things like privacy or security. CNN reports that a top national intelligence official doesn’t think those things exist anymore, anyway. Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, says:
“Protecting anonymity isn’t a fight that can be won. Anyone that’s typed in their name on Google understands that.”
Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says Kerr’s argument ignores both privacy laws and American history.
“Anonymity has been important since the Federalist Papers were written under pseudonyms,” Opsahl said. “The government has tremendous power: the police power, the ability to arrest, to detain, to take away rights. Tying together that someone has spoken out on an issue with their identity is a far more dangerous thing if it is the government that is trying to tie it together.”