Last week, The State Press published an in-depth report profiling hundreds of surveillance cameras around campus, many of which operate illegally against University policy. The story caused an immediate reaction, as the ASU Department of Public Safety announced the next day they would be revamping the policy. In fact, ASU police Cmdr. John Sutton admitted the policy reviews were directly prompted by the article.
In an effort to highlight this issue on a larger scale, it's time to take on some bigger fish. An even Bigger Brother, the Federal Government, does some serious snooping too.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is the premier military research agency in our government today. DARPA was deliberately created to promote innovative concepts counter to traditional military thought to think outside the box. According to its Web site, DARPA's mission is "to assure that the United States maintains a lead in applying state-of-the-art technology for military capabilities."
DARPA is responsible for such gems as the early Saturn Rocket program, M-16 rifles, stealth fighters, the Internet (ARPANET), e-mail systems and the Web, as well as ATM technology.
But recently, the cutting edge of military technology has entered the swamps of information manipulation and control.
Consider these new DARPA programs:
The Total Information Awareness project (TIA) is a controversial Pentagon program under the Information Awareness Office (IAO) designed to gather and analyze a vast array of information about Americans.
Basically, the program would develop a "large-scale counterterrorism database." The system would track every bit of information found on everyone in the country in public and private databases and then sort the info to identify suspicious behavior.
Author and activist Jim Hightower, who was at the forefront of the initial attack against TIA, reports that the program is now being continued under a different name, Information Exploitation, in a different agency, Advanced Research and Development Activity.
Another troubling DARPA program is the Combat Zones That See (CTS). CTS is an urban surveillance system that uses thousands of cameras linked to a central computer to track, record and analyze the movements of traffic. Its software can identify cars by size, shape, license plates and even by face recognition.
The frightening stated goal of CTS is to "track everything that moves."
The Center for Public Integrity reports that DARPA contracts do not require private contractors to share their research solely with DARPA, meaning the collected data could be available to non-government sources.
Whatever the intentions are, universal data tracking and video surveillance are not comforting thoughts.
The science fiction fantasies of cyberpunk dystopias dominated by power and technology are becoming real. It seems the futures of "Brave New World," "1984," and "Minority Report" are not so far away at all.
The State Press showed last week how effective it can be in combating governmental force. I am not so naive to think that the Department of Defense will announce a review of its policy because of this one column. But I urge that students critically examine these policies.
To find out more about TIA and CTS, call the Center for Democracy and Technology at (202) 637-9800 or check out http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0328/shachtman.php and
http://www.public-i.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=484
Ishtiaque Masud is an economics junior. Reach him at ishtiaque.masud@asu.edu.
