======================================================================= E P I C A l e r t ======================================================================= Volume 10.13 June 25, 2003 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Published by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Washington, D.C. http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_10.13.html ====================================================================== H A P P Y B I R T H D A Y G E O R G E O R W E L L ! ====================================================================== [1] Birthday Greetings [2] Selections from EPIC Advisory Board [3] Orwell and Language [4] Orwell and Commercialism [5] Orwell on Poverty and Inequality [6] Orwell on Perpetual War [7] EPIC Bookstore: Rise of the Computer State ====================================================================== [1] Birthday Greetings ====================================================================== Dear Mr. Orwell, Greetings on your 100th Birthday! You might be gratified to know that a new generation of readers have a growing interest in your writing. Your insights resonate as never before in these times. We take this occasion to share some of our personal reflections on themes you brought attention to, including language, commercialism, inequality, and war. The theme of surveillance is notably missing; we hope interested readers of the EPIC Alert might contribute a 1000 word essay on the subject and send it to orwell@epic.org. Contributions will be edited and posted on our website. Best regards, The EPIC Team ====================================================================== [2] Selections from EPIC Advisory Board ====================================================================== Philip E. Agre The dramatic improvements in the underlying technology are hardly speculative. We know what technologies are in the lab, and we know roughly how long it will take before those technologies reach the market. We are therefore justified in extrapolating historical cost trends into the foreseeable future. The capabilities of the technology in the next couple of decades are hardly in doubt. Nor can there be much doubt about the potential for abuse. We have abundant precedents from other technologies, and the burden is really on the person who would argue that automatic face recognition in public places will be an exception to these precedents. Databases will leak, technologies will exhibit function creep, information will be diverted to secondary uses, law enforcement will make use of technologies originally designed for other purposes, repressive governments will make use of technological advances pioneered in relatively free societies, and people's lives will be disrupted by quality control problems in the data. The argument here is not that automatic face recognition in public places will turn society into Orwell's 1984 overnight, or at all. The harms from automatic face recognition will develop slowly because the technology will not be deployed instantaneously, and because institutions change slowly. But the danger is great enough, and backed up by enough history and logic, and will be hard enough to reverse if it does materialize, that we are justified in acting now. Your Face Is Not a Bar Code: Arguments Against Automatic Face Recognition in Public Places, May 5, 2003, http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/bar-code.html David Chaum Today, individuals provide substantially the same identifying information to each organization with which they have a relationship. In a new paradigm, individuals provide different "pseudonyms" or alternate names to each organization. A critical advantage of systems based on such pseudonyms is that the information associated with each pseudonym can be insufficient to allow data on an individual to be linked and collected together, and thus they can prevent the formation of a dossier society reminiscent of Orwell's "1984". A system is proposed in which an individual's pseudonyms are created and stored in a computer held and trusted only by the individual. New cryptographic techniques allow an organization to securely exchange messages or payments with an individual known under a pseudonym--without the communication or payments systems providers being able to trace messages or payments. Other new techniques allow a digitally signed credential to be transformed by the individual, from the individual's pseudonym with the issuing organization, to the individual's pseudonym with a recipient organization. Credentials can be transformed only between pseudonyms of a single individual, and an individual can obtain at most one pseudonym with a particular organization, but even a conspiracy of all organizations can gain no information from the pseudonyms about their correspondence. The combination of these systems can prevent abuses by individuals, while averting the potential for a dossier society. A New Paradigm for Individuals in the Information Age, 1984 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, April 29 - May 02, 1984, http://www.computer.org/proceedings/sp/0532/05320099abs.htm Simon Davies Each week that passes sees one more strand of the web completed. Every strand is woven delicately, and we are told each time that the effort is all for our benefit. True, every strand catches another tax dollar or snares another criminal. But every strand binds honest citizens more tightly to the administration of government...Your finances, purchases, employment, interests, telephone activity and even your geographical movements are losing their anonymity. Not everything will be bad, however; technology will bring wonderful possibilities. It will also bring the nightmare of total nakedness. Big Brother: Australia's Growing Web of Surveillance (Simon & Schuster 1992) David H. Flaherty There appears to be a consensus against a totalitarian society or a police state, because of the regrettable precedents for each. All of us shudder at living in the fictional worlds of George Orwell's "1984" or Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. At what point does surveillance become unacceptable, whether by private detectives, the police, or welfare and taxation authorities? At what point does surveillance actually take place, when data are collected or when they are used? The shaping of appropriate answers is the concern of this entire volume. Officials privacy protectors have a basic role to play in crafting society's answers to these questions, in part because government created their agencies in order "to protect privacy," but also because since data protectors were first established, problems of surveillance have become more severe owing to the exponential growth in automation. The questions did not admit a one-time solution. Protecting privacy in Surveillance Societies: The Federal Republic of Germany, Sweden, France, Canada, and the United States (University of North Carolina Press 1989) Oscar Gandy Public policy deliberations about privacy in Congress, or the spectre of the much feared "1984" and the dominance by "big brother," can be seen to be linked closely to increases in the number of citizens who are concerned about privacy. A question that asked respondents to indicate how close had come to the society that George Orwell had described in his book 1984 found the proportion who though that we had already arrived at such a society to have more than doubled between 1983 and 1988 and to have trippled between 1983 and 1989 (from 6 percent to 19 percent). p.140. The Panoptic Sort (Westview Press 1993) Jerry Kang Extensive, undesired observation--what may be called "surveillance"-- interferes with this exercise of choice because knowledge of observation "brings one to a new consciousness of oneself, as something seen through another's eyes." Simply put, surveillance leads to self-censorship. This is true even when the observable information would not be otherwise misused or disclosed. Information collection in cyberspace is more like surveillance than like casual observation. As explained above, data collection in cyberspace produces data that are detailed, computer-processable, indexed to the individual, and permanent. Combine this with the fact that cyberspace makes data collection and analysis exponentially cheaper than in real space, and we have what Roger Clarke has identified as the genuine threat of dataveillance. Information Privacy in Cyberspace Transactions, 50 Stan. L. Rev. 1193, 1261 (1998) Gary T. Marx In considering current developments and trends in the study of social control, I have suggested the idea of the "maximum security society"with clear indebtedness to Bentham and Foucault I have found it useful to note some parallels between control themes found in the maximum security prison and the broader society. The maximum security society is made up of six subcomponents: the engineered, dossier, actuarial, suspicious, self-monitored, and transparent societies. George Orwell equated Big Brother with the harsh reality of a boot on a human face. The concept of the maximum security society is meant to characterize some softer social-control processes that have increased in importance and sophistication in recent decades, as the velvet glove continues to gain ascendancy over the iron fist. In contemporary society these forms of control are uncoupled and the former is clearly dominant-using the creation and manipulation of culture through the mass media, therapeutic and labeling efforts, the redistributive rewards of the welfare state, the use of deception (e.g., undercover techniques and informers), and the engineering away of infractions. The Engineering of Social Control: The Search for the Silver Bullet Published in J. Hagan and R. Peterson, Crime and Inequality (Stanford University Press 1995) http://web.mit.edu/gtmarx/www/bullet.html Pamela Samuelson George Orwell once wrote that "[g]ood prose is like a window pane." What I take Orwell to have meant by that remark is that when people read good prose, it makes them feel as if they've `seen' something (whatever the author was trying to convey) more clearly. Put another way, if a writer can induce his or her reader to feel that the reader would have come to the same conclusion that the author reached had the reader done his or her own investigation of the subject matter, the writer has achieved a kind of "window pane" effect on the reader. Good Legal Writing: of Orwell and Window Panes, 46 University of Pittsburgh Law Review 149, Fall 1984, http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~pam/papers/goodwriting.html Paul M. Schwartz George Orwell carried out the classic analysis of how surveillance can exert this negative pressure. In the novel 1984, first published in 1949, Orwell imagined a machine called the "telescreen." This omnipresent device broadcasted propaganda on a nonstop basis and allowed the state officials, the "Thought Police," to observe the populace. Computers on the Internet are reminiscent of the telescreen; under current conditions, it is impossible to know if and when the cyber-Thought Police are plugged in on any individual wire. To extend Orwell's thought, one can say that as habit becomes instinct and people on the Internet gain a sense that their every mouse click and key stroke might be observed, the necessary insulation for individual self-determination will vanish. Privacy and Democracy in Cyberspace, 52 Vand. L. Rev. 1609, 1657 (1999) Barbara Simons Numerous articles were written in 1984 boasting about how the world had escaped Orwell's dire predictions of governmental surveillance and the elimination of privacy. Many people rejoiced about the lack of omnipresent telescreens and the Thought Police, but far fewer people paid attention to the development of technologies that facilitate Big Brother-style surveillance. Most U.S. citizens feel that we are all protected by the Bill of Rights from secret governmental surveillance. Unfortunately, that has not always been the case historically, nor is it necessarily true today; worse, it may be still less true in the future if we fail to be continually on guard against creeping governmental intrusion into our private lives. Building Big Brother, Information Impacts Magazine, February 2000, http://www.cisp.org/imp/february_2000/02_00simons-insight.htm. Robert Ellis Smith We should remember that the laureates of the cybernetic nightmare-- Kafka, Orwell, Huxley--were in fact rebelling against impersonal bureaucracies more than computerization. The anti-utopias in George Orwell's "1984," Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We," and Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World: are _bureaucratic tyrannies_, not necessarily _computerized tyrannies_. Our Vanishing Privacy and What You Can Do to Protect Yours (Loompanics Unlimited 1993) ====================================================================== [3] Orwell and Language ====================================================================== "Total Information Awareness of transactional threats requires keeping track of individuals and understanding how they fit into models." - U.S. Department of Defense The labeling of government methods of surveillance has taken an odd turn in the United States. As if officials were ever sensitive to Orwell's warning in 1984 about the use of language to conceal intent, recent naming exercises have adopted a strategy that might almost satisfy the requirements of a truth in labeling law. Consider "carnivore," the FBI's code name for a new system of Internet surveillance that would enable the capture of messages moving across the network. Carnivore was chosen, internal governments reveal, to make clear that the techniques was selective: only the court-authorized evidence would be obtained. A separate program under consideration "omnivore" lacked the critical judgment and was rejected. Before Carnivore, the FBI described the system to wire surveillance capability into the telephone network as "operation root canal." The pain of the project is palpable. This history takes us then to the proposal from the Office of Information Awareness, which reminds us in a nod to Orwell that "knowledge is power," to undertake "Total Information Awareness." The intent is clear. The government must know everything about everyone. Where the data exists, it should be captured. Where it does not yet exist, it should be produced. Models of human behavior must be developed. Techniques to distinguish the abnormal from the normal devised. Your tax dollars at work. But public opinion did not favor these proposals. Carnivore got a makeover. It became "DCS 1000." No change in functional capability, just a new designation in government memos and on powerpoint slides. And the creature of the Office of Information Awareness was also scrubbed clean. An investment in the acronym "TIA" was preserved. The program renamed "Terrorist Information Awareness," which may upset grammarians, but should now ease a public that once thought it too could be the target of a system of total surveillance. In Politics and the Language English, Orwell wrote that simple writing was necessary to enable political debate. The government has been clear about its intent. The public has made clear its assessment. And so the terms of debate are changed, the purpose concealed, and programs march forward. - Marc Rotenberg ====================================================================== [4] Orwell and Commercialism ====================================================================== "Advertising is the dirtiest ramp that capitalism has yet produced," declared Orwell's Gordon Comstock in Keep the Aspidistra Flying. Disgusted with the advertising industry's disrespect for the public's intelligence, Comstock leaves his well-paying copy-writing job to live a life of poverty. He rejects the modern Decalogue, which has been reduced to two commercial commandments: "Thou shalt make money" and "Thou shalt not lose thy job." For Orwell, society's civil religion of the money god represents a new social control. Commercialism creates a new orthodoxy, a climate where thinking is unnecessary because propaganda ministers have provided all beliefs and ideas that need be known. Orwell remarks in Nineteen Eighty-Four that once this orthodoxy is established, people can have a right to intellectual liberty because "they have no intellect." Nowhere else in Orwell's work is the emptiness of commercialism more sharply criticized than in Keep the Aspidistra Flying. Orwell bites the conscience of the reader, making one painfully aware of how the lack of money inhibits many of life's joys. Eventually Comstock returns to his advertising agency job, where he arrives just in time to evaluate a colleague's new advertisement for an antiperspirant foot powder: "P.P. What about YOU?" "P.P" stands for pedic perspiration, and while the word "pedic" is an advertising-industry neologism, the company men nevertheless admire the slogan because it induced a "guilty tremor" in those who encountered it. Comstock writes the copy for the advertisements, which attempted to spread fear of loneliness and rejection amongst those who didn't buy the product. Orwell's criticism of commercialism is relevant today because advertising's reach has become both more pervasive and invasive. Marketers know no boundaries. They are on a quest to invade your private thoughts; to make commercials the "fabric" of your life. And thus, captivity seems to be important to advertisers. Propaganda should be force fed, just like the mandatory two minutes of hate in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Emerging technologies that could be used for captive advertising include directed sound devices that beam messages at a specific individual. Targets of the device cannot ignore the message, and feel as though the sound is literally inside their head. Others are working on "instant customer recognition" in order to create pervasive personalized marketing along the lines of Speilberg's Minority Report. Orwell's contribution to criticism of commercialism closely follows themes that were introduced by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. In Huxley's book, individuals were persuaded to love their own servitude through genetic influence, social engineering, and healthy doses of advertising-like propaganda. The selective release and repetition of information, Huxley's Bernard Marx observed, can "make one truth." Today's advertisers follow the same model, inundating us with commercial messages until they are incorporated in popular culture and language. The marketing ministers have been so successful that a number of commentators have suggested that the First Amendment recognize advertising as fully protected free expression, on par with our prayers and political advocacy. Apparently, the Constitution can serve both God and mammon. In recent years, there have been new calls to limit commercialism. Often, these ventures focus on marketing to children, as they may not possess adequate critical thinking skills and autonomy to evaluate advertising and commercial messages. In October 2002, the editors of British Medical Journal The Lancet recommended that "[m]ore radical solutions should be considered" to curb commercialism's effect on children, including "taxing soft drinks and fast foods; subsidising nutritious foods, like fruits and vegetables; labeling the content of fast food; and prohibiting marketing and advertising to children." However, in 1980 when the Federal Trade Commission attempted to curb the reach of invasive marketing to children, the advertising industry responded vigorously. The Industry successfully limited the agency's authority by getting Congress to bar the agency from promulgating rules to protect children from advertising. Perhaps I've been too hard on advertisers. Some argue that advertising eases the difficult burdens of modern life by providing useful information to ease our roles as consumers. The effect of advertising and commercialism might in fact be the opposite. That is, since it so frequently relies upon appeals to emotion and is devoid of pricing and objective quality information, advertising might actually harm individuals' understandings of products and the market. Orwell's view of commercialism as a subtle but powerful form of social control is finding a new following in a new generation, a generation that reads Stay Free! and Adbusters Magazine. A generation that is creating art such as Matt Groening's The Simpsons (where the local newspaper is called the Springfield Shopper), Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (1996), and Mike Judge's Office Space (1999). There may be some hope yet for a societal religious conversion away from the money god. - Chris Hoofnagle Adbusters Magazine: http://adbusters.org/ Stay Free! Magazine: http://stayfreemagazine.com/ Bad Ads: http://badads.org/ Commercial Alert: http://www.commercialalert.org/ ====================================================================== [5] Orwell on Poverty and Inequality ====================================================================== "You thought it would be quite simple; it is extraordinarily complicated. You thought it would be terrible; it is merely squalid and boring. It is the peculiar lowness of poverty that you discover first; the shifts that it puts you to, the complicated meanness, the crust-wiping." (Down and Out in Paris) Why does poverty have to be so low? Is it not enough that one must suffer from hunger and deprivation? Why must one also suffer from humiliation? Poverty as pure deprivation is understandable, but why must it carry social stigma? George Orwell believed that the lack of dignity in poverty results from a social structure that perpetuates a separation between classes. Those in power have incentive not to enact reforms to benefit the poor and they benefit by buttressing the social structures that perpetuate disparity. The theme of poverty and the separation between those that have and those that do not runs through his writings. He writes about separate classes in 1984, he contrasts the aristocratic pigs with the other farm animals in Animal Farm, he recounts the brutal poverty in Marrakesh, and he tells of his own personal encounter with poverty in Down and Out in Paris. For Orwell, poverty is a personal matter, and it goes to the heart of his understanding of human dignity. In Down and Out in Paris Orwell describes the work conditions of a dishwasher or "plongeur." The work is brutal. The work hours are long. The conditions are terrible. Orwell finds that the plongeur "is no freer than if he were bought and sold. His work is servile and without art; he is paid just enough to keep him alive; his only holiday is the sack. Except by a lucky chance, he has no escape from this life, save into prison." Orwell writes, "an idle man cannot be a plongeur; they have simply been trapped by a routine which makes thought impossible." Orwell examines why "comfortably situated people" are fond of identifying hard work with honest work. One reason could be to soften the tough nature of hard work. Transforming work that is senseless and brutal into something virtuous salves the conscience of the well off. Another reason is more instrumental--the "comfortably situated" actually perpetuate the current conditions to maintain their position. He writes, "I believe that this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob. The mob (the thought runs) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think." The danger of the mob is not a physical danger, but rather simply forcing the upper class to share some of their wealth. Allowing the working class time to think and organize would be a threat to the upper class way of life. This is central to Orwell's point. The conditions of the working class are perpetuated by a social structure that benefits the upper class, who in turn have little incentive to correct the disparity in the system. When the disparity is made apparent, the upper class brush it aside using convenient myths about the virtues of honest work. What really separates the classes then, is money. Orwell explains that beggars, even though they work hard, are universally despised simply because they fail to make money. "In practice nobody cares whether work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic; the sole thing demanded is that it shall be profitable." Thus, Orwell concludes, "[m]oney has become the grand test of virtue." There can be no dignity in poverty. Dignity is precluded by the defining condition of poverty, a simple deficiency of money. Orwell's comments on poverty resonate today. In a time of increasing unemployment and hardship, it takes a peculiar twist of logic to justify a tax cut that only benefits the wealthiest fraction of the population. Rather than trying to reconcile the disparity, the rich might be better off trying to ignore it. Ignoring the problem should be easy, since, as Orwell says, "[a]ll people who work with their hands are partly invisible." With the aid of private walled communities, ghettos, and twelve lane freeways the poor can remain invisible to the well off. Technologies of surveillance are often first aimed at minorities and the impoverished. The State of Connecticut invested in an expensive biometric system to combat welfare fraud--the saving from catching a few bad actors far exceeded by the total cost of the surveillance system. Since September 11, the use of background checks on new employees has seen increasing use. Companies are less likely today to hire someone who has a minor offense. If poverty encourages crime, these kinds of practice only encourage more poverty and crime. Private companies in the name of risk management use supposedly rational factors to discriminate among their customers, but these factors might actually be serving as proxies for factors that, if known, would be unlawful or obnoxious. New government risk profiling systems such as the air passenger profiling system or Total Information Awareness might result in furthering race, class, and ethnic divisions. Those with clean records, good credit can sail through the system, while those who have a pale of suspicion struggle to make ends meet. Orwell reminds us to pay close attention to the impact of these practices; the privileged have always tried to shield the true nature of discriminatory practices. - John Baggaley ====================================================================== [6] Orwell on Perpetual War ====================================================================== "Winston could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been at war, but it was evident that there had been a fairly long interval of peace during his childhood, because one of his earliest memories was of an air raid which appeared to take everyone by surprise." (1984) In Orwell's 1984, Big Brother maintains a totalitarian grip upon the country of Oceania, by means of informers and constant surveillance. Constantly in the background of this society of paranoia is a perpetual war, waged against one of two remaining superpowers in the world-Eurasia or Eastasia. Which two powers are at war at any given time is largely irrelevant, as no victory can ever be achieved. The purpose of the war is not, in fact, to win, but to do two things: control Oceania's economy and maintain in its citizens the credulity and fanaticism required to maintain complete devotion to the Party. In America we appear to be in the midst of a perpetual war on Terror. Like the Cold War, it is a constant pressure and concern, blooming occasionally from an ideological war on a concept to actual wars in actual locations--Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. This war may not be directed by a small cabal intent on consolidating and expanding its power, but the consequences might be similar. Are we adequately prepared for the consequences of this new war? Actual wars have, traditionally, been well defined in time--there are opening shots and final surrenders. And the two years following the shock of September 11th have been accompanied so far by two definite military actions against two different nations. These two actions have been linked, not just by time, but also in the justifications given for them. Both were viewed by the administration and the public as extensions of the War on Terrorism. Yet it was not a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda that justified a war in Iraq, but a more generalized fear of a potential attack from abroad. And Saddam Hussein's Iraq was certainly not the last unfriendly regime to plan development of weapons of mass destruction. The list not a particularly short one, and as governments and politics change, the list may extend indefinitely. Threats and dangers have always existed, and will always exist. In looking for potential enemies, one is always sure to find them, in one state of nascence or another. "The self-satisfied sheeplike face on the screen, and the terrifying power of the Eurasian army behind it, were too much to be borne; besides, the sight or even the thought of Goldstein produced fear and anger automatically. He was an object of hatred more constant than either Eurasia or Eastasia." (1984) The image of the burning World Trade Center towers is imprinted on the American consciousness. So are the images of the "enemy." The faces of Osama bin Laden and Mohammed Atta are filed in our minds in a drawer labeled "terrorist," as the face of Hitler and the swastika are filed under "Nazi." They are the faces of an enemy, people to rally against, effigies to burn. Given a face to hate, we can personify our fears and hatreds, and create in our minds an enemy that we feel a need to fight. This emotional response can often bypass good common sense. People often express a willingness to do anything, everything they can to "get the terrorists." We talk about wanting to "do something." Those "somethings" that get done run the gamut from sensible (securing cockpit doors) to nonsensical (confiscating nail clippers from traveling grandmothers) to egregious (detainees held for months without charges in cells brightly lit around the clock). "[T]o those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil. - John Ashcroft Attorney General Ashcroft's admonishment to the Senate Judiciary Committee does not merely raise concern about the chilling of open and honest debate. Suspicion and paranoia have all-too real consequences for real people. In the days following the attacks of 9/11, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies were flooded with tips from citizens well-meaning and otherwise, reporting "suspicious" activities. A recent New York Times article reported on scores of innocent people having their lives overturned by another person's unwarranted suspicion. In one example, nine men in Evansville, Indiana were rounded up, handcuffed, and imprisoned for a week on a false tip. It took nineteen months before their names were cleared from the national crime registry, and in the meantime, they were prevented from flying, renting apartments, or getting jobs. In the name of combating terrorism, the FBI and other agencies continually argue for broader powers to expand domestic surveillance. Suggestions that the restrictions exist to counter the FBI excesses of the Hoover era are ignored in the face of wartime necessity. Wartime necessity has often been used as a justification for many excesses-- the U.S. internment of American citizens of Japanese ancestry during World War II was justified as a wartime necessity. Rights given up under an immediate crisis or for a specified duration may seem reasonable in the aftermath of a disaster, but in a crisis, a war that has no victory conditions, these rights may be gone for good. The fact that there is no clear end to the War on Terrorism has lasting implications not just on the attitudes and policies of America, but it also has dire consequences for some. About 680 people captured in Afghanistan are still being held prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, where they have not had a trial, access to legal counsel, nor the benefit of prisoner-of-war status. When they will be released or charged has never been answered, but for references to "the end of the conflict." We are told to look for threats from within--among our neighborhoods, our neighbors. Yet there are so few terrorists and so many neighbors, and the suspicion that this new cold war creates can only have detrimental effects on communities around the country. These rifts may not be repaired until we can overcome an "us versus them" mentality, until we can look past a war that can end simply by us saying that it is over. "This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while." - George W. Bush - Sherwin Siy ====================================================================== [7] EPIC Bookstore: The Rise of the Computer State ====================================================================== The Rise of the Computer State; The Threats to Freedoms, Our Ethics and Our Democratic Process, by David Burnham (Random House 1980) http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=63-0394514378-2 David Burnham's 1980 book examining the proliferation of computers and their effects on society was prescient. There is hardly a person in this country not affected by the computer; its usefulness is unquestioned. In this work, however, Burnham asks about the liabilities of computers--just how close to Orwell's 1984 have we come? In this examination of the computer state, Burnham, a former New York Times investigative journalist, scrutinizes telephone companies, the FBI, the IRS, Social Security, credit reporting agencies, the NSA, the CIA, and cable companies to discover what their computers already know and are trying to find out about us. The book also examines how this information can be put to unforeseen and harmful uses. Burnham marshals a wealth of evidence that hadn't been available elsewhere to document the case that the rise of the computer state can threaten privacy, legal procedures, and democratic process. ================================ EPIC Publications: "The Privacy Law Sourcebook 2002: United States Law, International Law, and Recent Developments," Marc Rotenberg, editor (EPIC 2002). Price: $40. http://www.epic.org/bookstore/pls2002/ The "Physicians Desk Reference of the privacy world." An invaluable resource for students, attorneys, researchers and journalists who need an up-to-date collection of U.S. and International privacy law, as well as a comprehensive listing of privacy resources. ================================ "FOIA 2002: Litigation Under the Federal Open Government Laws," Harry Hammitt, David Sobel and Mark Zaid, editors (EPIC 2002). Price: $40. http://www.epic.org/bookstore/foia2002/ This is the standard reference work covering all aspects of the Freedom of Information Act, the Privacy Act, the Government in the Sunshine Act, and the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The 21st edition fully updates the manual that lawyers, journalists and researchers have relied on for more than 25 years. For those who litigate open government cases (or need to learn how to litigate them), this is an essential reference manual. ================================ "Privacy & Human Rights 2002: An International Survey of Privacy Laws and Developments" (EPIC 2002). Price: $25. http://www.epic.org/bookstore/phr2002/ This survey, by EPIC and Privacy International, reviews the state of privacy in over fifty countries around the world. The survey examines a wide range of privacy issues including data protection, telephone tapping, genetic databases, video surveillance, location tracking, ID systems and freedom of information laws. ================================ "Filters and Freedom 2.0: Free Speech Perspectives on Internet Content Controls" (EPIC 2001). Price: $20. http://www.epic.org/bookstore/filters2.0/ A collection of essays, studies, and critiques of Internet content filtering. These papers are instrumental in explaining why filtering threatens free expression. ================================ "The Consumer Law Sourcebook 2000: Electronic Commerce and the Global Economy," Sarah Andrews, editor (EPIC 2000). Price: $40. http://www.epic.org/cls/ The Consumer Law Sourcebook provides a basic set of materials for consumers, policy makers, practitioners and researchers who are interested in the emerging field of electronic commerce. The focus is on framework legislation that articulates basic rights for consumers and the basic responsibilities for businesses in the online economy. ================================ "Cryptography and Liberty 2000: An International Survey of Encryption Policy," Wayne Madsen and David Banisar, authors (EPIC 2000). Price: $20. http://www.epic.org/crypto&/ EPIC's third survey of encryption policies around the world. The results indicate that the efforts to reduce export controls on strong encryption products have largely succeeded, although several governments are gaining new powers to combat the perceived threats of encryption to law enforcement. ================================ EPIC publications and other books on privacy, open government, free expression, crypto and governance can be ordered at: EPIC Bookstore http://www.epic.org/bookstore/ "EPIC Bookshelf" at Powell's Books http://www.powells.com/features/epic/epic.html ====================================================================== Subscription Information ====================================================================== Subscribe/unsubscribe via Web interface: http://mailman.epic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/epic_news Subscribe/unsubscribe via e-mail: To: epic_news-request@mailman.epic.org Subject: "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" (no quotes) Automated help with subscribing/unsubscribing: To: epic_news-request@mailman.epic.org Subject: "help" (no quotes) Problems or questions? e-mail info@epic.org Back issues are available at: http://www.epic.org/alert/ The EPIC Alert displays best in a fixed-width font, such as Courier. ====================================================================== Privacy Policy ====================================================================== The EPIC Alert mailing list is used only to mail the EPIC Alert and to send notices about EPIC activities. We do not sell, rent or share our mailing list. We also intend to challenge any subpoena or other legal process seeking access to our mailing list. We do not enhance (link to other databases) our mailing list or require your actual name. In the event you wish to subscribe or unsubscribe your e-mail address from this list, please follow the above instructions under "subscription information". Please contact info@epic.org if you would like to change your subscription e-mail address, if you are experiencing subscription/unsubscription problems, or if you have any other questions. ====================================================================== About EPIC ====================================================================== The Electronic Privacy Information Center is a public interest research center in Washington, DC. It was established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging privacy issues such as the Clipper Chip, the Digital Telephony proposal, national ID cards, medical record privacy, and the collection and sale of personal information. EPIC publishes the EPIC Alert, pursues Freedom of Information Act litigation, and conducts policy research. For more information, e-mail info@epic.org, http://www.epic.org or write EPIC, 1718 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20009. +1 202 483 1140 (tel), +1 202 483 1248 (fax). If you'd like to support the work of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, contributions are welcome and fully tax-deductible. Checks should be made out to "EPIC" and sent to 1718 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20009. Or you can contribute online at: http://www.epic.org/donate/ Your contributions will help support Freedom of Information Act and First Amendment litigation, strong and effective advocacy for the right of privacy and efforts to oppose government regulation of encryption and expanding wiretapping powers. Thank you for your support. ---------------------- END EPIC Alert 10.13 ---------------------- .