Writing in the New York Post, Heather MacDonald takes on libertarians and other “privocrats”:
Our nation’s intelligence agencies failed to “connect the dots” before 9/11. And a left-right alliance of privacy extremists is doing its best to keep it that way: These “privocrats” have shot down nearly every proposal to use intelligence more effectively, terming them an assault on “privacy.”
The vigilantes now have in their sights CAPPS II – an extremely promising airline-passenger screening system to make sure that homicidal terrorists no longer board planes. CAPPS II would verify that a passenger is who he claims to be, and check whether government intelligence files list him as a possible terror suspect.
The crusade against CAPPS II is a textbook case of privacy charlatanism. In March 2003, for example, the Electronic Privacy Information Center told the European Parliament why it should refuse to cooperate with CAPPS II: The system would result in “widespread spying,” it said, by giving the Transportation Security Administration “access to [a passenger’s] financial and transactional data, such as credit reports and records of purchases, confidential business records . . .”
Not so: TSA would see none of such data about a passenger.
The ACLU, meanwhile, claims that CAPPS II would likely discriminate against minorities by using credit scores to rank a flier’s risk; such scores, according to the ACLU, have a “well-documented bias against minorities.”
Another lie: Even the ACLU admits that TSA has denied any intention of using credit scores to assess risk. But, intones the ACLU starchily, nothing the government has said so far actually “bars” it from doing so.
This position is ludicrous: At some point, a citizen must take his government at its word. Mistrust of government is a healthy instinct, but the assumption that everything a public official says is a lie leads to paralysis.
I agree with MacDonald, and tend to break with libertarians on those issues where privacy and security cross paths. You, however, might think differently. Discuss.
I don’t want the government in the spying business. Sorry, but I just don’t trust anything with as much power as the federal government.
Bill, do you also dislike the procedure that police follow when they check for outstanding warrants at a traffic stop?
All of this is dependent upon the assumption that CAPPS works in the first place. Which, if it’s sponsored by the federal government, means it probably won’t. It’s a long story, but I have a bit of experience with the efficacy rates of government databases and in my opinion they’re woefully underconnected and the information held in them is generally not up to date. Hence, I tend to think of this whole debate as moot. Any discrimination that might take place will be a result of a faulty system, not because of any of the factors listed in the article.
That said, however, it’s pretty obvious that we’re at war. There are sacrifices to make and if my privacy is one of those things that gets sacrificed for the greater good so be it. I flew Northworst in December 2001—my information was in that packet was handed over to NASA by the airline. I’ve even received a letter from Northwest explaining their rationale. Do I have a problem with this? Nope. No more so than I have a problem with the airline handing my frequent flyer information over to MCI/Nextel/Sprint or whomever they’ve got the long distance/cellphone=extra miles deal with. What Northwest did was actually a good thing in my book—much better than selling my name off to a marketing company. They were trying to make me safer and I have NO problems with that. In fact, I commend them for it—which is rough for me, because, in simple, easy to understand terms, I hate that friggin’ airline.
I tend to agree with you, Kathy—plenty of room for improvements. My beef is with those people who disagree with such programs on principle.
I weigh in on this matter quite heavily on my own blog.
Upshot is, I tend to part ways with Libertarians here as well. I have an army buddy who now works as a CT anaylist in Florida. He is incredibly frustrated by the fact they are crippled in their abilities to cross-reference databases.
I’ll entertain the possiblity that, once this threat has passed, we might need to fight to get our civil liberties back to the extent we have them. But we’re not going to make this threat go away by disallowing our analysts to do thier jobs.
I agree, Jeff.
It’s astonishing, really—you would have thought that 9/11 would have driven the point home for most people that we’re at war, that there are sacrifices to be made, that the world is a different place. Nope. Yet, amazingly enough, I do believe these nimrods are going to be the first to the podium to cry out, “What could have been done to prevent this?” the next time we’re attacked.
This position is ludicrous: At some point, a citizen must take his government at its word. Mistrust of government is a healthy instinct, but the assumption that everything a public official says is a lie leads to paralysis.
This paragraph alone could be expanded into a four volume philosophical work
McDonalds last paragraph seems to define the line between actually useful citizens and the “users” who seem to want all of the benefit but accept none of the responsibility for maintaining a safe and secure homeland.
being extremely cheap and desirous of clinging to every last penny the government would attempt to entitle itself to wring from my grasp, few programs they come up with tend to excite me, even in a post-9/11 world where security is a serious issue. shoring up that argument is the rhetorical quest for evidence that our bureaucracy is overwhelmingly capable of executing a plan. any plan.
PS does MacDonald mention homicidal terrorists so we will be able to distinguish them from other sorts, say, pacifist terrorists, whom we shouldn’t be bothering?
Homicidal terrorists? Aren’t they, like, from the Dept. of Redundancy Department?
I’m sorry tee bee, apparently you’re aware of more species of terrorist than am I. I admit I was not even aware that such a thing as a pacifist terrorist existed!
My bad.
no sweat, willow. MacDonald clearly doesn’t want you to watch out for the pacifists, hence qualification. just those damn homicidal terrorists. we don’t want to be paranoid or anything.