NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] NYTimes: "Government Aims to Build a 'Data Eye in the Sky'"
NYTimes: "Government Aims to Build a 'Data Eye in the Sky'"
http://j.mp/oj0uUo (New York Times)
Some social scientists and advocates of privacy rights are deeply
skeptical of the project, saying it evokes queasy memories of Total
Information Awareness, a post-9/11 Pentagon program that proposed
hunting for potential attackers by identifying patterns in vast
collections of public and private data: telephone calling records,
e-mail, travel data, visa and passport information, and credit card
transactions.
"I have Total Information Awareness flashbacks when things like this
happen," said David Price, an anthropologist at St. Martin's
University in Lacey, Wash., who has written about cooperation between
social scientists and intelligence agencies. "On the one hand it's
understandable for a nation-state to want to track things like the
outbreak of a pandemic, but I have to wonder about the total
automation of this and what productive will come of it."
- - -
A crucial observation is that data analysis can bring enormous
benefits to the world, but data can also be abused, and we must resist
the tendency to allow the latter to trigger knee-jerk restrictions of
the former. How to manage this issue well, will be one of this
century's most important efforts.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://vortex.com/g+lauren
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com