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Rand report: Facecams can thwart terrorism, install them now! Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 11:48:22 -0400 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: FC: Rand report: Facecams can thwart terrorism, install them now! From: Declan McCullagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] [I've copied the author of the paper, a Rand analyst named John Woodward. He is an attorney who lives in Virginia and was most recently a CIA operations officer for 12 years, according to his bio, in addition to being the CIA Staff Assistant to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy at the Pentagon. --Declan] ******** From: "Thomas C. Greene" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Rand urges face-scanning of the massesDate: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 06:14:30 -0700 http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/20966.html Think tank urges face-scanning of the masses The famous Rand Organization http://www.rand.org, a putatively non-partisanthink tank, has come out in favor of using face-scanning technology toviolate the privacy of the innocent masses in search of -- you guessed it --terrorists and pedophiles, the two most detested fringe-groups on theplanet. Following the regrettable inclinations of all modern governments, a recentRand report http://www.rand.org/publications/IP/IP209/IP209.pdfreckons that the natural rights of the majority of ordinary, law-abidingcitizens should be sacrificed for the sacred mission of identifying andprosecuting a mere handful of sexually perverted or homicidal lunatics. "Biometric facial recognition can provide significant benefits to society,"Rand says, and adds that "we should not let the fear of potential butinchoate threats to privacy, such as super surveillance, deter us from usingfacial recognition where it can produce positive benefits." Chief among these are the detection of terrorists and pedophiles, as wesaid. No matter that these sick individuals comprise a mere fraction of afraction of normal human beings. No matter that detecting them requires themost outrageous government intrusions into the natural comings and goings ofmillions of innocent people. Rand's answer to serious questions of personal liberty is a feweasily-skirted regulations which ought to allay all of our concerns. "By implementing reasonable safeguards [for government use of biometric facescanning], we can harness its power to maximize its benefits whileminimizing the intrusion on individual privacy," the report chirpsoptimistically. Rand returns repeatedly to the controversial, and prosecutorially worthless,use of biometric face scanning at the 2001 Super Bowl http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/16561.html. "While facial recognition did not lead to any arrests at the Super Bowl,there is evidence that using such a system can help deter crime. In Newham,England, the crime rate fell after police installed 300 surveillance camerasand incorporated facial recognition technology. While it is possible thatthe criminals only shifted their efforts to other locales, crime in Newhamat least was deterred." That's rich. So it's 'possible' that local criminals moved elsewhere, is it?Anyone with an ounce of common sense knows it's certain that they did, whichimplies that no one will ever be safe until every dark corner of the planetis blanketed by high-tech cameras performing a sort of criminal triage onall of us. And after all, things could be worse. "The facial recognition system used atthe Super Bowl was not physically invasive or intrusive for spectators. Infact, it was much less invasive than a metal detector at a public buildingor an inauguration parade checkpoint. In this sense, facial recognitionhelped to protect the privacy of individuals, who otherwise might have toendure more individualized police attention," Rand points out. Of course, no appeal to Fascism and Kafkaesque control would be completewithout reference to the safety of innocent children. Rand does not let usdown: "many parents would most likely feel safer knowing their children'selementary school had a facial recognition system to ensure that convictedchild molesters were not granted access to school grounds." It's all very popular, but immensely dangerous, thinking. Preservingpersonal liberty requires that we all accept a bit of chaos, a bit ofhooliganism, a bit of risk. Yes, you or I might possibly get our headsbashed in by brain-dead hooligans, or get blown up by terrorist bombers, andour little lambs might get exploited by sexual sickos if we don't keep aclose eye on them. But probably not. Surely, the suffocating, risk-free environments our governments are tryingso desperately to sell us to extend their powers of observation and controlare far more grotesque and soul-destroying than anything a terrorist or apedophile might ever hope to produce. POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing listYou may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.htmlThis message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ |
