Govt. Sensing Technology May Be Double-Edged Sword for Privacy, Critics Warn

Some ACG scenarios include: (1) Requiring airline passengers to carry smart cards which could be “sweetened” to perform additional tasks like helping bearers through security, or to find the right gate at the right time. (2) Outfitting mall shoppers with sensing cards able to locate stores or parking spaces using distributed-sensor networks. (3) Equipping PDAs with sensors able to report by radio frequency to a central computer any signal from contraband biological, chemical or nuclear material. Such devices could achieve a system of “decentralized surveillance,” ACG officials said.

There never can be perfect protection and the govt. can’t stop every attack, but identifying technologies citizens can activate would help, ACG Vp Gerry Yonas said. He said his center’s work aims to explore innovative technology at the idea stage; his team often is pondering concepts not yet developed. “We're not bound by existing products or even customers” and in the case of soft targets -- like airports, shopping malls and hotels -- the equipment needed is in relatively early stages of development.

The goal is to abolish anonymity, “the terrorist’s friend,” said Sandia researcher Peter Chew: “We're not talking about abolishing privacy -- that’s another issue,” Chew added. “We're only considering the effect of setting up an electronic situation where all the people in a mall, subway, or airport ‘know’ each other -- via, say, Bluetooth -- as they would have, personally, in a small town.” This would help malls and communities become less desirable targets, he said. “None of the 9/11 hijackers was anonymous,” responded Chris Jay Hoofnagle, dir. of the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s West Coast office: “Eliminating anonymity, in this context and most others, is more about control over and marketing to people than fraud or terrorism prevention.”

The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) weighed in on the would-be devices, questioning their utility. CDT Assoc. Dir. Ari Schwartz said the goal shouldn’t be erasing anonymity, but enhancing security. “Just having a smart card doesn’t make you a non-threat,” he said: “We have to realize that as we start building up these tools, there are still people out there who are going to be threats to security and terrorists will use the systems that are being created against us.” Simply using identity-screening devices and personal information to “figure out who is a good guy and who is bad guy” isn’t the answer. It is imperative that the tools don’t invade privacy and protect security simultaneously, Schwartz said: “If the main goal is to identify everyone everywhere thinking that you're going to get a security benefit out of it, that’s a mistake.”

Yonas admitted ACG is aware of peoples’ privacy woes -- like “who’s got the data, who’s watching whom and so on” -- and reiterated his work’s forward-thinking nature: “There has to be community involvement in this kind of information technology, which would have to be a benefit, and the benefits would have to outweigh the obvious problems.” ACG’s bottom line is finding pathways that lead toward effective technology, not how that technology is implemented, he said. Plus, he noted, the pervasive, miniaturized location sensing and communication technology his team has suggested is probably less than a decade away.