Inside Risks Barbara Simons and Eugene H. Spafford
Risks of Total Surveillance
he U.S. Public Policy committee of ACM (USACM) is concerned the proposed Total Information Awareness (TIA) Program, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, will fail to achieve its stated goal of “countering terrorism through prevention.’’ Further, we believe the vast amount of information and misinformation collected by any system resulting from this program is likely to be misused to the detriment of many innocent American citizens. Because of serious security, privacy, and personal risks associated with the development of any vast database surveillance system, we recommend a rigorous, independent review of TIA. Such a review should include an examination of the technical feasibility and practical reality of the entire program. Security Risks. The state of the art in computer system design is such that any systems resulting from TIA are unlikely to be able to preserve integrity and keep data out of unauthorized hands, whether they are operated by governmental or commercial organizations. Frequent reports of successful hacker breakins, insider misuse of supposedly secure systems, and the pervasive existence of software flaws indicate we are unable to make these systems adequately secure, and suggest the likelihood of a trustworthy database system emerging from this effort is vanishingly small. The databases proposed by TIA would also increase the risk of identity theft by providing a wealth of personal information to anyone accessing the databases, including terrorists masquerading as others. Recent incidents involving about 500,000 military-relevant medical files and 30,000 credit histories are harbingers of what may be in store. Privacy Risks. The need for oversight and control is especially great when aggregation and analysis of personal information is done without the knowledge or consent of the people being monitored. It is misleading to suggest that...