Loss of Privacy

Apparently, the US government has tracked down terrorists, and they’re playing video games.  The Reynard Project [pdf] will profile online gamers’ behavior, enabling it to detect the multitude of violent extremists who seem to be infiltrating World of Warcraft and other online video games.

The Reynard project will begin by profiling online gaming behavior, then potentially move on to its ultimate goal of “automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world.”

And these behaviors and actions will all be realistic because they won’t ever encounter a stoned, 14 year old blowing stuff up just for the hell of it.

The publicly available report — which was mandated by Congress following earlier concerns over data-mining programs — also mentions several other data-mining initiatives. These include:

Video Analysis and Content Extraction – software to automatically identify faces, events and objects in video

Tangram – A system that wants to create surveillance and threat warning system that evaluates known threats and finds unknown threats to issue warnings ahead of an attack

Knowledge Discovery and Dissemination – This tool is reminiscent of the supposedly-defunct Total Information Awareness program. It seeks to access disparate databases to find patterns of known bad behavior. The program plans to work with domestic law enforcement and Homeland Security.

Note that this will not lead to the capture of terrorists, nor will it preserve our privacy or safety.  What it will do is waste more taxpayer’s money.

After reading the DNI report, it is clear that they plan to search the entire World Wide Web with programs such as VACE, hoping to find these patterns, real or imagined, and without your consent.

The problem is that there are so many societies within WOW and over 10 million users that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to detect who is a real terrorist and who is just a jackass screwing around.  Then we end up delving into the situation where everyone playing is soon considered a terrorist and will be monitored.

Now that we’ve begun to stroll down that road of “anyone could be a terrorist” the government won’t stop until we have lost all our freedoms.  Much like the war on drugs, the war on terror is going to fail, yet we’ll keep throwing billions at it, telling Americans that it’s working and giving them false sense of security.

Lawmakers in the New Mexico legislature have introduced a new measure, which would force a nanny tax on video games, TVs, and video game consoles.

The revenue generated from the game and TV tax would be used to fund a new state educational effort aimed at getting kids out of the house more.

Specifically, the new fund would empower officials at the New Mexico states parks division and public education department to do the following:

• Develop curriculum-based programs for teachers to use on public lands and at other outdoor learning sites for outdoor education initiatives;

• Develop hands-on teaching materials for children for use in outdoor education programs;

• Provide transportation for children to experience outdoor education programs;

• Provide substantial and frequent outdoor experiences for children; and

• Increase outdoor nature-oriented physical activity programs for school-age children.

While it’s a good thing to get outside, get exercise and fresh air, is it really the responsibility of the state to determine how much exercise you get?  Video games are no more responsible than spending hours surfing the Internet or instant messaging.  Perhaps we should also start adding an extra tax to books, puzzles, and traditional games, such as Monopoly.

Efforts to get kids to spend more time outdoors is great, but don’t let the government be your nanny and start dictating how your kids are raised.

Yet another idiotic plan has come out of the United Kingdom.  A new proposal calls for a £10 fee just to be able to smoke.  Without the permit, it would be illegal to smoke.  The makers of this idea believe it will get people to quit smoking.  Under the proposal, the fee would go to the NHS.

“You’ve got to get a form, a complex form – the government’s good at complex forms; you have got to get a photograph.

“It’s a little bit of a problem to actually do it, so you have got to make a conscious decision every year to opt in to being a smoker.”

Not only do they want you to pay £10 in order to be allowed to smoke, they want you to fill out forms and get a photograph.  In addition to this, there is the new bureaucracy that will be involved in shuffling the forms around and issuing the license.  After all this, is it really possible to give any of the £10 to the NHS?

“The senior government advisor putting this idea forward is not only adding to the red tape and bureaucracy we already have in this country.  He is openly bragging that he wants to make the form as complex as possible to fill in.”

More asinine proposals from the government.  This will end up being another form of tobacco tax, which will end up costing everyone more money simply to prop up a scheme that won’t even be fully covered by the new tax.

Although the Department of Homeland Security has listened to domestic violence prevention groups, there is still far too much left open with the new REAL-ID requirements that have left battered women worried about losing their current protections under the law.

The final rule says that both an individual’s “full legal name” and “true address” must be stored in the DMV database, regardless of what’s displayed on the card and encoded on its bar code. It also requires that motor vehicle departments scan and store “source documents,” such as birth certificates, to verify a driver’s license applicant’s identity.

Homeland Security hasn’t yet stipulated what information must be exchanged among the state-to-state databases, saying only that it will be “limited,” nor has it specified exactly how the database linking will work, leaving lingering worries among privacy and victim advocates.

All it would take is a determined, persuasive stalker–many have tricks, like saying an ex-spouse is suicidal or otherwise in need of help–and a gullible or corrupt DMV employee, and a victim’s identity could be divulged, Southworth said.

“Given that there are less than six degrees of separation between most abusers and a friend or relative who works for the DMV, we are concerned about victims’ location information housed in state databases that could be searched nationally,” Southworth said. “Prior to national search ability, a victim could move to a different state and increase her safety and privacy, but national search functionality could place countless victims at risk.”

In response to privacy groups’ concerns about DMV employees’ access to the databases, Homeland Security opted to require states to devise their own “security plans” for Real ID. That plan is supposed to include, among other things, “procedures to prevent unauthorized access, use, or dissemination of applicant information and images of source documents retained pursuant to the act” and background checks for some, though not all, DMV employees.

Thus, we have another reason why REAL-ID won’t work.  It is too easy to circumvent and places vulnerable people into potential life-threatening circumstances.  We can now add battered women to police officers and judges, whose lives could be in jeopardy if REAL-ID becomes the law.

The only positive aspect is that we appear to have time on our hands.  The federal government has pushed back the deadline, again, to 2011, hoping that more states will support the measure.  Fortunately, as time goes on, more states are rejecting REAL-ID.

After privacy advocates delayed the plan for several months, the US federal government is moving ahead with plans to spy on its own citizens.

Last fall, senior Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee asked the department to put the program on hold until there was a clear legal framework of how the program would operate. This request came during an ongoing debate over the rules governing eavesdropping on phone calls and e-mails of suspected terrorists inside the United States.

The new plan explicitly states that existing laws which prevent the government from spying on citizens would remain in effect, the official said. Under no circumstances, for instance, would the program be used to intercept verbal and written conversations.

What is going to happen when the terrorist that the government is pursuing turns out to be an American citizen?

…the availability of satellite images will be expanded to other agencies to support the homeland security mission. The details of how law enforcement agencies could use the images during investigations would be determined in the future after legal and policy questions have been resolved, the official said.

It is possible that in the future an agency might request infrared imaging of what is inside a house, for instance a methamphetamine laboratory, and this could raise constitutional issues. In these instances, law enforcement agencies would still have to go through the normal process of obtaining a warrant and satisfying all the legal requirements. The National Applications Office also would require that all the laws are observed when using new imaging technology.

So, they are saying now that they will have to jump through the current legal hoops, but in the future they are hoping to change that so that any suspect can be put under the terrorism flag and be hauled in for questioning.  Too bad they’ve already violated the “we won’t use it on our own citizens” before.  See Ted Kaczynski for a good example.

Still, we don’t know if these privacy issues have been resolved or just swept under the carpet.  It’s likely that it’s been swept away and most Americans placated enough that they’ve turned back to the latest incarnation of American Idol and no longer care what’s happening.