08:30 AM Apr. 03, 2003 PT
NEW YORK -- Privacy advocates: Quit picking on the U.S. government.
If you don't want the government to do what it must to protect you from terrorists, you should butt out, said Heather MacDonald, a lawyer at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. She made her remarks Wednesday at the 13th annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference.
And, she urged, stop all the panic-stricken screaming, because it's endangering human lives.
Al-Qaida and other terrorist groups wield technology as a weapon with no worries about privacy rights, MacDonald said. But fear and distrust of anti-terrorism and surveillance technology hampers the U.S. government's ability to shore up defenses and stop attacks before they happen.
At issue was the Pentagon's planned Total Information Awareness program.
TIA would search government and commercial databases as well as the Internet in the hopes of detecting and stopping terrorist plots. Privacy advocates worry that the plan is far too broad and would unnecessarily snoop into the financial, travel and medical records of law-abiding citizens.
McDonald said the "hysterical cries" from those who see dark plots behind every government antiterrorist plan just proves that privacy advocates have a "luddite mentality."
Conference attendees -- having just been called anti-technology for perhaps the first time in their lives -- reacted with stunned silence. But spirited rebuttals soon followed.
"The details of (TIA) are so secret that it's difficult to know how to debate it. And the devil is in those details," countered Katie Corrigan, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "But from the little we do know it's clear that it's unworkable, unreliable and highly susceptible to abuse. And it's a complete departure from our right to be left alone."
The feeling at this year's conference is as if a beloved pet dog suddenly turned feral and bit the hand that feeds it.
The overwhelming majority of people here have had a long-term, impassioned and obsessive affair with technology. But many now seem to feel that the technology they thought would change the world for the better is being turned against them.
Not that they didn't fear that this day might come.
In 1994, Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, told attendees at the 4th annual CFP gathering that if they didn't pry themselves away from their computers, go outside and talk to ordinary folks about privacy issues, there would be no such thing as privacy within 15 years.
It appears that at least some of those conversations didn't take place.
Ask folks on the streets of Manhattan, just outside the hotel where the conference is being held, what they think about Total Information Awareness or the Patriot Act, and you get blank stares.
"Total information -- what?" said Al Demarco, a sanitation worker. "Sounds like some sort of a hippie thing -- be aware, be total, be the information."
Ollie Fouda, owner of a sidewalk newsstand, hazarded a guess that the Patriot Act was a new Broadway play.
"That's some new terrorist trick," said Ramzi Rahman, a Manhattan cab driver. "The bad guys act like patriots to get into this country, right?"
Not quite. The USA Patriot Act was passed shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks and gives the FBI and Department of Justice broad powers to use wiretaps, electronic eavesdropping and other information-gathering techniques.
A recent proposal aimed at expanding these powers even further -- officially called the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 (PDF) but less-than-fondly called Patriot II by many privacy advocates -- calls for the creation of a terrorist DNA database; eases laws pertaining to search, seizure and admissible evidence; and would allow the attorney general to revoke the citizenship of any resident who provides "material support" to terrorist groups.
Inside the New Yorker Hotel, conference attendees discussed TIA and the Patriot Acts in excruciating detail. That is, they detailed why they feared and loathed such proposals. But few facts about TIA and Patriot II have been officially confirmed by the government.
George Radwanski, Canada's privacy commissioner, said some of the surveillance technology governments are proposing now would never have been acceptable to the general populace in most Western countries just a few years ago.
"We must not allow governments to use Sept. 11 as a Trojan horse to implement invasive technologies," he said.
The Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference was originally conceived (PDF) as a neutral zone where hackers, government and law enforcement officials could meet, debate, share their concerns and come to some common understanding.
The conference runs through Friday.