The Washington Post has a story on the proliferation of data fusion centers that have sprung up in dozens of states after 9/11. The centers tap into various commercial information brokers such as Accurint, ChoicePoint's Autotrack and LexisNexis, which the Posts writes, provide, "Web-based services that deliver instant access to billions of records on individuals' homes, cars, phone numbers and other information."
The story notes that each the fusion centers operate under state-defined different rules, and much of the activity is not open to outside review. At least one center (in Rhode Island) also claims that it has access (through the FBI) to classified CIA databases. This gives a back door channel to the CIA to keep an eye on US residents, something that it can't do directly.
It is not known how much information that is captured is wrong, but given that the Treasury Department's terrorist watch list has on-going problems with inaccurate and outdated information, there is little doubt that much of the information in these centers is suspect.
Even if when the information is accurate, the Treasury Department says that many users of the information don't bother to use it correctly. No doubt this happens with the information in these data centers as well.
I wonder how long before RFID information is captured by these data fusion centers.
Comments (2)
Once the National ID system which has been "backdoored" on us by the 9/11 Commission is put in place, the combination of that with these personal data mining operations will produce a totalitarian cybernetic police state which will beggar all of the fantasies of science fiction.
Those us of us alive today can only hope that we will not live long enough to suffer under it - but our descendents will curse our memory for being so blind and stupid as to have let the genie out of the bottle while there was still time to stop it.
Posted by Dave Simmons | April 10, 2008 12:28 PM
Posted on April 10, 2008 12:28
Dave Simmons comments were most fascinating to me as I have written a novel about just such a future "totalitarian cybernetic police state" as he describes.
"Colors" (ISBN 978-1-4116-7999-3) is about a future society where data mining and hardware control of "biologicals" produces a "reliability score" for everyone which totally controls their lives - much like a credit score on steroids. I worry greatly about my descendents just as Dave does and I hope we as engineers very carefully evaluate both good and evil edges of the technological swords we forge. Should we personally let all our own ideas become reality just because we can, without self evaluation of all possible results?
Posted by Gordon Young | April 11, 2008 12:09 PM
Posted on April 11, 2008 12:09