Big Business Becoming Big Brother

[Guest guest]

This has been one of the goals of " privatization " to

dodge accountability of programs within government restraints.

Another is to be able to directly transfer dollars

from public treasuries to private company pockets.

 

 

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,64492,00.html

 

Big Business Becoming Big Brother

By Kim Zetter

 

02:00 AM Aug. 09, 2004 PT

 

The government is increasingly using corporations to

do its surveillance work, allowing it to get around

restrictions that protect the privacy and civil

liberties of Americans, according to a report released

Monday by the American Civil Liberties Union, an

organization that works to protect civil liberties.

 

Data aggregators -- companies that aggregate

information from numerous private and public databases

-- and private companies that collect information

about their customers are increasingly giving or

selling data to the government to augment its

surveillance capabilities and help it track the

activities of people.

 

Because laws that restrict government data collection

don't apply to private industry, the government is

able to bypass restrictions on domestic surveillance.

Congress needs to close such loopholes, the ACLU said,

before the exchange of information gets out of hand.

 

" Americans would really be shocked to discover the

extent of the practices that are now common in both

industry and government, " said the ACLU's Jay Stanley,

author of the report. " Industry and government know

that, so they have a strong incentive to not publicize

a lot of what's going on. "

 

Last year, JetBlue Airways acknowledged that it

secretly gave defense contractor Torch Concepts 5

million passenger itineraries for a government project

on passenger profiling without the consent of the

passengers. The contractor augmented the data with

passengers' Social Security numbers, income

information and other personal data to test the

feasibility of a screening system called CAPPS II.

That project was slated to launch later this year

until the government scrapped it. Other airlines also

contributed data to the project.

 

Information about the data-sharing project came to

light only by accident. Critics like Stanley say there

are many other government projects like this that are

proceeding in secret.

 

The ACLU released the Surveillance-Industrial Complex

report in conjunction with a new website designed to

educate the public about how information collected

from them is being used.

 

The report listed three ways in which government

agencies obtain data from the private sector: by

purchasing the data, by obtaining a court order or

simply by asking for it. Corporations freely share

information with government agencies because they

don't want to appear to be unpatriotic, they hope to

obtain future lucrative Homeland Security contracts

with the government or they fear increased government

scrutiny of their business practices if they don't

share.

 

But corporations aren't the only ones giving private

data to the government. In 2002, the Professional

Association of Diving Instructors voluntarily gave the

FBI the names and addresses of about 2 million people

who had studied scuba diving in previous years. And a

2002 survey found that nearly 200 colleges and

universities gave the FBI information about students.

Most of these institutions provided the information

voluntarily without having received a subpoena.

 

Collaborative surveillance between government and the

private sector is not new. For three decades during

the Cold War, for example, telegraph companies like

Western Union, RCA Global and International Telephone

and Telegraph gave the National Security Agency, or

NSA, all cables that went to or from the United

States. Operation Shamrock, which ran from 1945 to

1975, helped the NSA compile 75,000 files on

individuals and organizations, many of them involved

in peace movements and civil disobedience.

 

These days, the increasing amount of electronic data

that is collected and stored, along with developments

in software technology, make it easy for the

government to sort through mounds of data quickly to

profile individuals through their connections and

activities.

 

Although the Privacy Act of 1974 prohibits the

government from keeping dossiers on Americans unless

they are the specific target of an investigation, the

government circumvents the legislation by piggybacking

on private-sector data collection.

 

Corporations are not subject to congressional

oversight or Freedom of Information Act requests --

two methods for monitoring government activities and

exposing abuses. And no laws prevent companies from

voluntarily sharing most data with the government.

 

" The government is increasingly ... turning to private

companies, which are not subject to the law, and

buying or compelling the transfer of private data that

it could not collect itself, " the report states.

 

A government proposal for a national ID card, for

example, was shot down by civil liberties groups and

Congress for being too intrusive and prone to abuse.

And Congress voted to cancel funding for John

Poindexter's Total Information Awareness, a national

database that would have tracked citizens' private

transactions such as Web surfing, bank deposits and

withdrawals, doctor visits, travel itineraries and

visa and passport applications.

 

But this hasn't stopped the government from achieving

the same ends by buying similar data from private

aggregators like Acxiom, ChoicePoint, Abacus and

LexisNexis. According to the ACLU, ChoicePoint's

million-dollar contracts with the Justice Department,

Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal

agencies let authorities tap into its billions of

records to track the interests, lifestyles and

activities of Americans.

 

By using corporations, the report said, the government

can set up a system of " distributed surveillance " to

create a bigger picture than it could create with its

own limited resources and at the same time " insulate

surveillance and information-handling practices from

privacy laws or public scrutiny. "

 

Most of the transactions people make are with the

private sector, not the government. So the amount of

data available through the private sector is much

greater.

 

Every time people withdraw money from an ATM, buy

books or CDs, fill prescriptions or rent cars, someone

else, somewhere, is collecting information about them

and their transactions. On its own, each bit of

information says little about the person being

tracked. But combined with health and insurance

records, bank loans, divorce records, election

contributions and political activities, corporations

can create a detailed dossier.

 

And studies show that Americans trust corporations

more than they trust their government, so they're more

likely to give companies their information freely. A

2002 phone survey about a proposed national ID plan,

conducted by Gartner, found respondents preferred

private industry -- such as bank or credit card

companies -- to administer a national ID system rather

than the government.

 

Stanley said most people are unaware how information

about them is passed on to government agencies and

processed.

 

" People have a right to know just how information

about them is being used and combined into a

high-resolution picture of (their) life, " Stanley

said.

 

Although the Privacy Act attempted to put stops on

government surveillance, Stanley said that its authors

did not anticipate the explosion in private-sector

data collection.

 

" It didn't anticipate the growth of data aggregators

and the tremendous amount of information that they're

able to put together on virtually everyone or the fact

that the government could become customers of these

companies, " Stanley said.

 

Although the report focused primarily on the flow of

data from corporations to the government, data flow

actually goes both ways. The government has shared its

watch lists with the private sector, opening the way

for potential discrimination against customers who

appear on the lists. Under section 314 of the Patriot

Act, the government can submit a suspect list to

financial institutions to see whether the institution

has conducted transactions with any individuals or

organizations on the list. But once the government

shares the list, nothing prevents the institution from

discriminating against individuals or organizations on

the list.

 

After the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the FBI

circulated a watch list to corporations that contained

hundreds of names of people the FBI was interested in

talking to, although the people were not under

investigation or wanted by the FBI. Companies were

more than happy to check the list against the names of

their customers. And if they used the list for other

purposes, it's difficult to know. The report notes

that there is no way to determine how many job

applicants might have been denied work because their

names appeared on the list.

 

" It turns companies into sheriff's deputies,

responsible not just for feeding information to the

government, but for actually enforcing the

government's wishes, for example by effectively

blacklisting anyone who has been labeled as a suspect

under the government's less-than-rigorous procedures

for identifying risks, " the report states.

 

Last March, the Technology and Privacy Advisory

Committee, created by Secretary of Defense Donald

Rumsfeld to examine government data mining, issued a

report (PDF) stating that " rapid action is necessary "

to establish clear guidelines for responsible

government data mining.

 

The ACLU's Stanley said companies are in the initial

stages of the Homeland Security gold rush to get

government contracts, and that the public and Congress

need to do something before policies and practices of

private-sector surveillance solidify.

 

" Government security agencies always have a hunger for

more and more information, " said Stanley. " It's only

natural. It makes it easier for law enforcement if

they have access to as much info as they want. But

it's crucial that policy makers and political leaders

balance the needs of law enforcement and the value of

privacy that Americans have always expected and

enjoyed. "

 

End of story