Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

<div><p><b>Clayton Northouse </b> is an information policy analyst at OMB Watch and former program manager of the Computer Ethics Institute. <b>Ramon Barquin </b> is president of the Computer Ethics Institute and Barquin International. <b>Jane Fishkin </b> is chief information officer emerita at the Brookings Institution.</p></div>

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Protecting What Matters

Brookings Institution Press

Chapter One

CLAYTON NORTHOUSE

On November 9, 2002, readers of the New York Times learned that Pentagon researchers planned to develop a massive virtual database, potentially containing data on every American, that could provide "instant access to information from Internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents." Known as Total Information Awareness (TIA), the program originated in the Defense Department's Information Awareness Office, which was set up after September 11 to help develop predictive technologies that could aid the government in preventing future attacks. TIA planners hoped to exploit the vast amount of electronic information stored in commercial and governmental databases to find and track terrorists. Their goal was to develop analytical tools that would search through these mountains of data and generate an electronic profile of likely terrorists. Taken together, these tools and the databases to which they were applied could provide the government with an all-seeing eye on the world. In fact, TIA's logo was the all-seeing eye found on the U.S. dollar bill, and its motto was "scientia est potentia" (knowledge is power).

News of TIA unleashed a firestorm of protest, not only among left-leaning civil libertarians but also on the right. A few days after news of TIA broke, William Safire used his Times column to warn:

Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend-all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."

To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information the government has about you-passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the hidden camera surveillance-and you have the supersnoop's dream: a "Total Information Awareness" about every American citizen.

Other analysts came to TIA's defense, arguing that the new security challenges facing the United States demanded a new type of response. Since the end of the cold war, nonstate actors had replaced foreign governments as the major threats to U.S. national security. In order to track and defeat enemy combatants in decentralized networks spanning the globe, the intelligence community had to collect more data than ever before and draw links between seemingly innocuous bits of information. "It is the only way to protect ourselves," explained former CIA official John MacGaffin. "For the last forty years, there were a finite number of bad guys coming out of a finite number of places. Now we have an infinite number of threats from an infinite number of things."

Tools such as Total Information Awareness, advocates maintained, were critical to this task. In addition, they argued, concerns about civil liberties could be addressed by ensuring that privacy safeguards were in place. A combination of judicial oversight and modern technologies, such as anonymity tools, could allow the government to fight the war on terror without infringing unduly on ordinary citizens' rights.

The public and Congress were not convinced. For many, TIA's Big Brother overtones were too difficult to ignore. And the fact that the Information Awareness Office was headed by retired rear admiral John M. Poindexter, who was convicted of lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair, did little to allay their concerns. In May 2003 the Defense Department responded to TIA's critics by releasing a detailed report, as required by Congress, that pledged to make the protection of Americans' privacy and civil liberties a "central element" of the program. It also announced that henceforth TIA would be known as Terrorist Information Awareness rather than Total Information Awareness. But the critics were unappeased. Even Poindexter's resignation later that summer-following a new flap over plans to launch a terrorism futures trading market-failed to quell opposition to the programs he had helped create. In September 2003 Congress cut off funding for TIA and shut down the Information Awareness Office.

This case illustrates the controversy provoked by ambitious efforts to harness information technology to the cause of homeland defense. It also raises a number of questions that will remain vital long after this particular program's demise: What principles should guide us in negotiating the relationship between security and liberty in the aftermath of September 11? How does technology factor into this complex set of concerns? What benefits do techniques like data mining offer, and how should they be used? To what extent are we willing to give the government control over our personal information? Do current efforts to exploit information and information technology violate the principles embodied in the Fourth Amendment?

The contributors to this volume address these critical questions. In the next essay in this section, Alan Westin examines public opinion data to identify the broad contours of the current debate over security, liberty, and technology. In the second section, "Protecting Security and Liberty: Information Technology's Role," James Steinberg, Zoe Baird, James Barksdale, Gilman Louie, Gayle von Eckartsberg, and Bruce Berkowitz analyze the necessary restructuring of the intelligence community and the role that technology can play in combating terrorism. They also suggest how technology can be used to protect the homeland without necessarily threatening civil liberties. Finally, in the third section, "Technology, Security, and Liberty: The Legal Framework," Larry Thompson, Jerry Berman, Beryl Howell, Senator Jon Kyl, and Senator Russell Feingold focus on key legal issues at the intersection of liberty and security and continue the debate over the proper legal restrictions on the government's power to use information technologies for national security purposes.

Security and Liberty: The Fundamental Debate

American history is, to a great extent, a study of the tension between liberty and security. The Founders' desire to protect what they saw as inalienable rights, including liberty of thought, association, and speech and freedom from unwarranted government incursions into citizens' homes, is enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Yet over the more than two hundred years since the Constitution was ratified, these basic liberties have been compromised repeatedly during periods of national uncertainty.

In 1798, with the nation prepared for war, President John Adams and the Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made any "false, scandalous, and malicious" statement against the United States government punishable by fine and imprisonment. In addition, they gave the president the exclusive authority to deport any foreigner considered to be a threat to national security. At a time of rising tensions with France, the Federalists argued that these measures were necessary to preserve order and protect the...