- St. Louis, MO - In Arizona, some supermarkets
now require a fingerprint before they will cash a customer's check. In
Japan, companies use eye scans to ensure security. New York State keeps
the genetic records of all convicts on file to aid crime detection.
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- Around the world, new technology is allowing
corporations and governments unprecedented ability to fight fraud, detect
scams, and enhance security.
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- But the technology that tracks suspected
terrorists and tells marketers that people who drive old Volvos are more
likely to eat fat-free yogurt may also be creating a new 'surveillance
society.'
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- Collecting Data
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- As public and private agencies collect
motor-vehicle data, medical records, even the fingerprints of millions
of people - and sift it with microsecond efficiency - such data could eventually
be pieced together to determine who gets a job, a loan, or a health-insurance
policy. Unless societies are vigilant, experts warn, the notion of living
a private life, where some things are nobody's business but your own, will
not survive the next century. "1984 may have simply been too early
a date," says Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American
Civil Liberties Union in New York, referring to George Orwell's seminal
work. "We are now approaching a time when we will live in a surveillance
society where all our movements and actions will be monitored." To
be sure, a few policymakers and technologists are fighting to reverse these
trends. But some high-tech fraud-fighters say the battle is already lost.
"The days of privacy are over," says John Valentine, president
of Infoglide Corp. in Austin, Texas. "You can't even change your name
without being found."
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- Technological Big Brother
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- Technology is allowing Big Brother to
thrive in his new digital incarnation. In the past five years, computers
have gotten powerful and cheap enough " and the software sophisticated
enough - to collect and sift through millions of pieces of data to uncover
subtle patterns of behavior. Because such data live on networks, thousands
of pieces of such data can be cobbled together to create a highly accurate
and intrusive view of just about anyone, even if they avoid the limelight.
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- That may be good. Governments and corporations
are sharing data to track criminals internationally and uncover insurance
scams. But privacy experts worry the technology is so powerful and the
information-sharing so endemic that governments and companies won't be
able to resist broader spying. "Twenty-five years ago, the fear was
the big dossier, the big file, the big database," says James Dempsey,
senior staff counsel with the Center for Democracy and Technology, a privacy
advocacy group in Washington. Now, "all these computers are linked
together Big Brother and his twin, Big Corporation, have joined forces."
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- Smile At The Camera
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- Consider the current flap over Image
Data, a small Nashua, N.H., company that plans to build a national database
of identification photos. Its goal is simple: Crooks can,t use fake or
stolen IDs if store clerks can call up photos in a data bank. But the company
has touched off a storm of criticism after buying more than 22 million
drivers' license photos from three states.
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- Worse, according to a Washington Post
report last week, the company also got $1.5 million in federal funds and
technical assistance from the Secret Service. The federal government hopes
to use the technology for much broader purposes than advertised, including
fighting terrorism and checking up on illegal immigrants. The flap has
caused Florida and Colorado to halt their sales of license photos to the
company. South Carolina is suing to get its images back, although a state
court has ruled against it.
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- The case is hardly unique. Private companies
routinely buy government data on everything from federal court decisions
to state motor-vehicle information.
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- By linking government information to
their own sales data, companies look for patterns to help market their
products. (Mr. Valentine's Infoglide company, for example, is the one that
found the link between Volvo owners and yogurt.)
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- Leaning On Corporations
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- Sometimes the government forces companies
to collect data it wants. Currently, federal bank regulators are proposing
a 'Know Your Customer' program, which would require banks to routinely
review their clients, transactions and notify the IRS and federal law-enforcement
agencies when there,s unusual behavior.
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- The program, scheduled to take effect
in April 2000, aims to fight laundering of drug money. But regulators have
gotten so much criticism they appear to be backing away from the idea.
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- Companies are also beginning to collect
physical data about people once reserved for police departments. For instance:
Ever since 1995, when the Bank of America in Las Vegas cut fraudulent check-cashing
in half with a fingerprinting system, other banks have started requiring
the practice when customers without accounts want to cash a check. At least
one day-care center in Arizona uses fingerprinting for identification.
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- Even more chilling for privacy advocates
is genetic fingerprinting. Already, police keep genetic records of sex
offenders in the U.S. and, in New York State, all convicts. The idea is
to simplify crime detection, but it raises grave social questions.
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- "This is a serious kind of threat,"
says Reg Whitaker, a Canadian political scientist and author of a new book,
The End of Privacy: How Total Surveillance is Becoming a Reality. "One
could imagine not that far in the future, people would be typecast in terms
of their genetic makeup."
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- A supposed genetic predilection to alcohol
could make it harder for an individual to get auto insurance, for example.
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- New Regulations
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- The European Union is moving ahead with
regulations intended to limit what data can be collected and how they can
be used, but the Internet is challenging its ability to keep a lid on information,
expects say. The U.S. stands at the other extreme, maintaining the barest
patchwork of privacy laws but generating several alternatives to regulation.
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- Several Internet businesses are pushing
self-regulating schemes. In the past year, a Palo Alto, Calif., group called
TRUSTe is offering a seal of approval to companies that agree to put their
privacy policies online. If the company wants to use its customer data
for some other purpose, it has to alert individuals and give them a chance
to opt out.
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- Meanwhile, the World Wide Web Consortium,
which sets technical standards for the Internet, is working to create the
technology that would allow users to control what information they gave
out. That way, users would set their preferences once in their browsing
software and Internet businesses would automatically accept those preferences
when the customer visits.
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- Few privacy experts believe such self-policing
will solve inappropriate electronic snooping by companies and government.
But it's a step, they say, to putting Big Brother back in the box.
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- Copyright 1999 The Christian Science
Monitor. All rights reserved.
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