Privacy and the "Terrorist Surveillance Act"
Submitted by jajacobs on Fri, 2006-11-10 16:34.
President Bush says that he wants the lame duck Congress to pass the Terrorist Surveillance Act (President Bush Meets with Cabinet Rose Garden, November 9, 2006).
What does this have to do with government information? If we continue with the current trend of government information being available only on the web from government-controlled web servers, we enhance and simplify the ability of the government to monitor and examine the government information we read. The "Terrorist Surveillance Act" will make this worse because it will effectively change the minimalist privacy policies the government has (see Will GPO guarantee user privacy? Can it?) into surveillance policies.
The "Terrorist Surveillance Act" is misnamed. It doesn't authorize the government to spy on terrorists, it authorizes the government to spy on everyone hoping that it can find terrorists.
Why is that bad? Surely, it shouldn't be bad "if I have nothing to hide" right? As Guy Kewney explains, mining data for patterns yields matches for people who are not terrorists. It enables the government to find innocent people and worse it enables the government to find...
...[n]ot terrorists, just enemies. Hostile journalists, campaigning lobbyists, critical journalists, businessmen who are likely to sponsor rival parties, people who oppose the party leader's favourite idea of the year.
Kewney's comment uses examples from the UK, but it is relevant to citizens of any government that is trying to use data mining of legitimate information seeking behavior to try to identify terrorists. Such surveillance has more of a chilling effect on regular citizens than it does on actual terrorists.
- "I have nothing to hide" - or the Sainsbury's Lesson By Guy Kewney, The Register (November 8, 2006)
The "Terrorist Surveillance Act" is a misleading name for a bad idea. I believe it is just the sort of misguided, bad policy that voters rejected in our recent election.
Now we can do two things: We can tell our representatives that we don't want this legislation now, or in January, or ever. And, we can insist that GPO and government agencies deposit copies of government information with FDLP libraries, ensuring that citizens have access to government information from libraries that respect privacy and honor the "right to read" which depends or our right to privacy.
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Suggested language for Congress on "TSA"
I think Jim is right that we should contact Congress and let them know that we do not want to see consideration of the "terrorist surveillance act." As one living in a red state seemingly untouched by Tuesday's blue tsunami, I feel it's best to take a somewhat indirect approach. If you have Congressmembers who usually vote for the President representing you, here's some suggested language to use (which you should tweak):
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As one of your constituents, I am pleading with you to limit the scope of the lame duck session of Congress to completing work on the budget bills listed at http://thomas.loc.gov/home/approp/app07.html.
Please allow major decisions on warrantless surveillance and other far reaching legislation to be taken up by the next Congress. There is nothing besides the budget that must be completed before January.
The American people elected a new Congress based on the expectation of changes in policy. Please do not tie the new Congress' hands before it starts. If the shoe were on the other foot, you would be completely justified in insisting that major non-budget decisions be deferred until January. And I would stand with you.
In the interest in saving paper and postage, I am not requesting a reply to this letter.
Respectfully,
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No matter what you write, I think that 1) you should write and 2) you really should be polite about it. Aside from Joe Lieberman, many of the President's Congressional supporters are smarting from an intense humiliation last Tuesday. Either they lost their seats outright, or they are looking forward to a minimum of two years in minority party status. Considering they likely fear that the Democrats will "do to others as had been done unto them", they're probably depressed and angry. With a mind-set like that, an angry letter of your own might simply goad them into a spiteful vote, regardless of the consequences to the country. Or they'll simply file your letter in the trash. Be different and polite and perhaps they'll listen.
That's my opinion.
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"And besides all that, what we need is a decentralized, distributed system of depositing electronic files to local libraries willing to host them." -- Daniel Cornwall, tipping his hat to Cato the Elder for the original quote.
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