Smile! You're on candid database!

This is an edited version of "an informal survey of some of the most widely known surveillance and snooping programs out there now," which appeared in the Daily Yomiuri (Japan) on February 17, found via a link at the February 23 Christian Science Monitor.

The Matrix: Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange, which enables government and law enforcement officials to combine information about individuals culled from both government and commercial data sources. The Matrix is actually run by a private company. Queries are entered into a system called the Factual Analysis Criminal Threat Solution, or FACTS. One use of such systems is to search for patterns of information or behavior which might indicate criminal behavior. The Matrix is being used by Florida and New York, and is funded by the Department of Homeland Security.

Carnivore: An FBI program to snoop through electronic communication of all forms, including e-mail messages, Web browsing activity, and electronic fund exchanges. While the system can be configured to record only specific communications, critics cite that the system lacks the ability to audit its activity, opening the door for serious abuse.

CAPPS II: The Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System (CAPPS II), being developed by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to enable TSA personnel and airport security to access personal information stored in government and commercial databases. Using this information, the system tags every passenger with a color code: Green means that you are free to travel, yellow means that you will face increased scrutiny, and red means that you are on a no-fly list. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), reports indicate that anywhere from 3% to 8% of the population may be flagged as yellow or red. There is no clear way to find out how you were assigned your color code, and no official way to change it once established.

Total Information Awareness (TIA): Developed as a research program by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the same group responsible for the Internet, it was shut down by Congress in September 2003 after a public outcry. The goal was to compile a super database of sorts, containing thousands of other public and private data sources, located in this country and elsewhere. The TIA program could then trawl endless information including your driving records, tax filings, visa and passport use, calls for police assistance, and more. TIA would have access to records listing all your phone calls, all e-mails sent and received (including the content), and all Web sites you have visited. TIA as envisioned is no longer with us, but it's unclear whether the project simply moved into the category of "black" defense projects and therefore outside of public scrutiny.

Echelon: The granddaddy of all surveillance systems, it's a global system of interceptors and supercomputers that attempts to monitor all electronic communication on Earth. Run by the National Security Administration, the system has no public oversight, and is not even officially acknowledged to exist.

And there are a number of additional systems in various stages of development. Most use state-of-the-art software, including linguistic analysis and machine learning, to comb through terabytes of data looking to extract patterns of behavior and establish indirect connections between individuals.

One recent example I have read about describes a system in development that will be able to link all friends and associates to a suspected criminal, captured through public information available on the Web, to enable authorities to more carefully scrutinize the behavior of the entire network of friends.

Sounds a bit paranoid doesn't it? I would have thought so too had the scenario not been put forth by the company developing the system itself!

The EFF site, by the way, is a good place to go to start checking out issues related to data mining and privacy.