For the last few days, I’ve been reflecting on the connection between a couple of disturbing recent news items.
Neither one has gotten the media attention that I think they deserve, outside of the typical geek channels.
First is the Pentagon’s new Total Information Awareness project, which is a massive database containing extremely detailed information on all US citizens, including e-mail messages, credit-card activity, travel arrangements and medical records. William Safire wrote a good editorial which you can read online if you register at the NY Times site (it doesn’t cost anything).
This is frightening by itself. But I’d been contemplating how it related to news about what has been described as the largest identity theft case in US history. Hackers (and not even very sophisticated ones) stole information from the big 3 credit bureaus. So far, the casualty count is 30,000 victims and $2.7 million in fraud, and it ain’t over yet.
Thinking about hackers hitting the credit bureaus brings to mind Willie Sutton’s explanation of why he robbed banks: “That’s where the money is”. The humonguous credit bureau databases are the motherlode of information that could be used by thieves. There’s not a single larger source of information about damn near everybody in the country. Until now. The US government plans to put an even greater source in the hands of a convicted felon. And considering the governments woeful past record of data (in)security, I see no reason to trust them to keep this information secure.
As luck would have it, I hadn’t gotten around to putting those thoughts together here until a friend sent me the text of a seemingly unrelated, amusing Wall Street Journal article. Reading that article online unfortunately requires a paid subscription to the WSJ. Space and copyright considerations prevent me from reproducing the entire text here, but the gist of it is the “amusing” mistakes made by systems such as TiVo, Amazon.com, etc., which make assumptions about customers’ viewing/reading/shopping preferences based on applying data mining technology to stored information about their previous choices. TiVo apparently automatically records programs that it thinks a customer would like, without being specifically requested. The WSJ article pointed out some amusing results of this:
Mr. Iwanyk, 32 years old, first suspected that his TiVo thought he was gay, since it inexplicably kept recording programs with gay themes. A film studio executive in Los Angeles and the self-described “straightest guy on earth,” he tried to tame TiVo’s gay fixation by recording war movies and other “guy stuff.”
“The problem was, I overcompensated,” he says. “It started giving me documentaries on Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Eichmann. It stopped thinking I was gay and decided I was a crazy guy reminiscing about the Third Reich.”
Like TiVo, other techno-profilers run hard with limited information. Ray Everett-Church of Fremont, Calif., who is gay, ordered “Queer as Folk” videos from Amazon.com. Understandably, the site began suggesting gay-related calendars and books. Then he bought a baby book for a pregnant friend. So for weeks, the site also recommended parenting books. He says it was as if Amazon.com decided he was “a pregnant gay man.”
He fought back, he says, “by inundating it with additional data. I searched for other stuff — on politics, computers — so it would stop throwing baby books at me. Now it thinks I’ve abandoned the baby and I’m preparing for a career in politics.”
Even Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos knows the potential mortification factor. For a live demonstration before an audience of 500 people, Mr. Bezos once logged onto Amazon.com to show how it caters to his interests. The top recommendation it gave him? The DVD for “Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity.” That popped up because he had previously ordered “Barbarella,” starring Jane Fonda, a spokesman explains.
By itself, the WSJ article is amusing. When you consider that it provides good real-life examples of the state of the art in the kind of data mining technology that the government is going to use to sift through every available detail of your life, it’s chilling.
Proponents of this kind of destruction of privacy always say that “good guys” should have nothing to fear. But whether or not you’re a “good guy” is going to be based on some imperfect analysis of random pieces of your life. My college buddy Jeff recently commented on another government invasion of privacy, saying
It’s all happening too quickly – the hawks in our society are grabbing power in the name of patriotism. I fear for my daughter’s future.
I don’t have children. But I fear for my own future.
Oh yeah, by the way, Happy Thanksgiving!!