Database Project Is Dangerous

Computerworld - Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, infuriated people, including me, when he said in January 2000, "You have zero privacy. Get over it."
But I'm not mad now. I'm just scared.
Vice Adm. John Poindexter, who was convicted by a jury as an Iran-Contra co-conspirator (the conviction was overturned on a technicality), is running a Pentagon program to search massive quantities of personal information of ordinary Americans, including financial transactions, phone and e-mail records, even medical and veterinary records. All the data gets run through analytic models; anything that matches the wrong kind of model gets pulled for special attention.
If this plan goes through, you have zero privacy. Want to get over it?
Well, why not? Lots of Americans think they've got nothing to hide. Why should they care? Here's why: The only controls on this program are established by the people running the surveillance. Effectively, then, there are none. By definition, the search models are secret. Nobody outside the program will ever know what the models are looking for. The rules can change, anytime, without discussion. That's an invitation for abuse.
Are you a gun owner? Terrorists use guns. If Poindexter's team decides that guns have to be tracked, the model gets tweaked, and the government will automatically learn about every gun and bullet you buy with your credit card, whether you registered it or not. Like to watch movies? Maybe you rented The Battle of Algiers. If the model flags it or some other flick for being radical, the government might look at everything you buy or every person you call on the phone, without the quaint formality of a search warrant. Think your ideas and beliefs are nobody else's business? If the government knows which magazines you read and which books, records and movies you buy or rent, then they'll know what you think. Marketers do similar kinds of affinity analysis every day, with far less data.
Will this help catch terrorists? Maybe. It's never been done. The outcome's unknown. But we already know the term for countries where everyone is under surveillance: police states. Iraq and North Korea fit the description. It's no coincidence that these countries are poor. It's hard to be creative when you're under constant surveillance.
Poindexter's plan makes glancing references to privacy. He seems to think that we can have both nationwide surveillance and liberty. He's wrong. Period. Surveillance is power, just like knowledge. If the government is peeking at every detail of our lives, without a court order, for any