[FRIAM] Information technology judiiciary.

[Nicholas Thompson]

All,  

I feel like "WE"  (by which I mean you-all) have something to contribute to the current discussion on warrantless wire taps.    Note the Washington Post, below.  Does anybody else agree that Data Mining needs an entirely different structure of civil rights protections then investigations of person?  Should somebody ( by which I mean you-all) TELL the washington post that?   I mean I assume we would approve of a universal search for "bomb-making materials --frequent holidays in Pakistan") but not for "sexual indescretions FRIAM members".  The problem is, of course, that civil rights law is designed to protect individuals and we dont know what individuals are involved until we get a hit.   Some judicial agency has to pass on the SEARCHES.   What worries me more than national security data mining from a civil rights point of view is the complete freedom taht law enforcement seems to have for searching in more personal areas.  I think we need  an ITJ   ... i.e., an Information Technology Judiciary. 

The Democratic-led Congress, more concerned with protecting its political backside than with safeguarding the privacy of American citizens, left town early yesterday after caving in to administration demands that it allow warrantless surveillance of the phone calls and e-mails of American citizens, with scant judicial supervision and no reporting to Congress about how many communications are being intercepted. To call this legislation ill-considered is to give it too much credit: It was scarcely considered at all. Instead, it was strong-armed through both chambers by an administration that seized the opportunity to write its warrantless wiretapping program into law—or, more precisely, to write it out from under any real legal restrictions."


Which of us is going to write the Washington Post?????

Not me.   I am just a psychologist.  

Nick 


Nicholas S. Thompson
Research Associate, Redfish Group, Santa Fe, NM (nick at redfish.com)
Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University (nthompson at clarku.edu)
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