Sleepycatz

Security through Surveillance

A recent article int the NY Times has revealed that the Department of Homeland Security is funding the development of software to sniff out anti-government bias in the written word. The software will be first used on foreign and domestic newspapers to, presumably, detect those who are disloyal, and thus a threat to US security. As the article points out:

Researchers at institutions including Cornell, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Utah intend to test the system on hundreds of articles published in 2001 and 2002 on topics like President Bush’s use of the term “axis of evil,” the handling of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, the debate over global warming and the coup attempt against President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

Yes, apparently, holding a position contrary to the president on Global Warming is an indicator of anti-Americanism. We can all be certain that this technology will be quickly applied to Internet blogs and e-mail traffic once it is ready — or more likely in a test deployment to assess its capabilities. Of course DHS attempts to put the best face on ths program:

Federal law prohibits the Homeland Security Department or other intelligence agencies from building such a database on American citizens, and no effort would be made to do that, a spokesman for the department, Christopher Kelly, said.

Kelly’s argument, however, is as disingenuous as most surveillance proclamations have been. By stating that they are not directly tying such data sets to specific people - but instead tying them to anonymous (or aliased) blogs, or rotating IP addresses, the DHS can easily get around this law.

Why the Department of Homeland Security — which is charged with the physical protection of our country — is investing our tax dollars into a system to monitor hidden biases in newspapers is far beyond the logic any sane person.

The greatest irony in the NYT story is when, reporter, Eric Lipton quotes Andrei Sitov, Washington bureau chief of the Itar-Tass news agency. Sotov dismays that this technology may be used to stifle criticism of the president or the administration. “This is what makes your country great, the open society where people can criticize their own government,” Sitov said. When Tass, the former arm of Soviet propaganda, suggests that our government maybe going too far in sniffing out dissent; well, that expresses some level of irony I lack the language skills to descibe.

h/t Homeland Studipity

This entry was posted by steve on Thursday, October 5th, 2006 at 10:45 pm and is filed under Misc. Tech, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.