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how not to use computers, parts one and two
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Date: Thu, 3 Aug 95 17:21:51 PDT
From: RISKS Forum
RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Thursday 3 Aug 1995 Volume 17 : Issue 23
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Date: Tue, 1 Aug 1995 17:51:20 -0700
From: Phil Agre
A controversy is growing around the failure of "Intelligent Transportation System" programs in the United States to exercise any leadership in the adoption of technologies for privacy protection. As deployment of these systems accelerates, some of the transportation authorities have begun to recognize the advantages of anonymous toll collection technologies. For example, if you don't have any individually identifiable records then you won't have to respond to a flood of subpoenas for them. Many, however, have not seen the point of protecting privacy, and some have expressed an active hostility to privacy concerns, claiming that only a few fanatics care so much about privacy that they will decline to participate in surveillance- oriented systems. That may in fact be true, for the same reason that only a few fanatics refuse to use credit cards. But that does not change the advantages to nearly everyone of using anonymous technologies wherever they exist.
Let me report two developments, one bright and one dark. On the bright side, at least one company is marketing anonymous systems for automatic toll collection in the United States: AT/Comm Incorporated, America's Cup Building, Little Harbor, Marblehead MA 01945; phone (617) 631-1721, fax -9721. Their pitch is that decentralized systems reduce both privacy invasions and the hassles associated with keeping sensitive records on individual travel patterns. Another company has conducted highway-speed trials of an automatic toll-collection mechanism based on David Chaums digital cash technology: Amtech Systems Corporation, 17304 Preston Road, Building E-100, Dallas TX 75252; phone: (214) 733-6600, fax -6699. Because of the total lack of leadership on this issue at the national level, though, individuals need to do what they can to encourage local transportation authorities to use technologies of anonymity. It's not that hard: call up your local state Department of Transportation or regional transportation authority, ask to talk to the expert on automatic toll collection, find out what their plans are in that area, and ask whether they are planning to use anonymous technologies. Then call up the local newspaper, ask to talk to the reporter who covers technology and privacy issues, and tell them what you've learned.
On the dark side, here is a quotation from a report prepared for the State of Washington's Department of Transportation by a nationally prominent consulting firm called JHK & Associates (page 6-9):
Cellular Phone Probes. Cellular phones can be part of the backbone of a region-wide surveillance system. By distributing sensors (receivers) at multiple sites (such as cellular telephone mast sites), IVHS technology can employ direction finding to locate phones and to identify vehicles where appropriate. Given the growing penetration of cellular phones (i.e., estimated 22% of all cars by 2000), further refinements will permit much wider area surveillance of vehicle speeds and origin-destination movements.
This is part of a larger discussion of technologies of surveillance that can be used to monitor traffic patterns and individual drivers for a wide variety of purposes, with and without individuals' consent and knowledge. The report speaks frankly of surveillance as one of three functionalities of the IVHS infrastructure. (The others are communications and data processing.) The means of surveillance are grouped into "static (roadway-based)", "mobile (vehicle-based)", and "visual (use of live video cameras)". The static devices include "in-pavement detectors", "overhead detectors", "video image processing systems", and "vehicle occupancy detectors". The mobile devices include various types of "automatic vehicle identification", "automatic vehicle location", "smart cards", and the just-mentioned "cellular phone probes". The visual devices are based on closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras that can seve a wide range of purposes.
The underlying problem here, it seems to me, is an orientation toward centralized control: gather the data, pull it into regional management centers, and start manipulating traffic flows by every available means. Another approach, much more consonant with the times, would be to do things in a decentralized fashion: protecting privacy through total anonymity and making aggregate data available over the Internet and wireless networks so that people can make their own decisions. Total surveillance and centralized control has been the implicit philosophy of computer system design for a long time. But the technology exists now to change that, and I can scarcely imagine a more important test case than the public roads. People need to use roads to participate in the full range of associations (educational, political, social, religious, labor, charitable, etc etc) that make up a free society. If we turn the roads into a zone of total surveillance then we chill that fundamental right and undermine the very foundation of freedom.
Phil Agre, UCSD
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Date: Wed, 02 Aug 95 09:33:44 -0700
From: Lauren Wiener
The 31 July 1995 issue of Forbes includes an article (pp. 136-7) on the products of Apache Medical Systems, which predict patient outcomes based on a database of "400,000 hospital admittances covering 100-odd diseases. From these statistics Apache's software can predict patient survival with an accuracy that can sometimes beat that of doctors' hunches." [fake italics mine]
The software is intended to guide the doctor's choice of treatment. Several examples are given, include a rather chilling one in which the supposed objectivity of the computer is enlisted to coax a husband for permission to take his wife off a respirator and let her die. The doctor who founded the company (Dr. Knaus) is quoted as saying he created the system because "I wasn't smart enough to figure out what to do in each situation." Another highlight: "Many hospitals adopted the Apache system to cut costs and measure quality in intensive care units."
The article closes with a brief discussion of the ethical issues, in which Dr. Knaus says: "If I were [the patient], I would want to be judged on Apache. It knows only those facts that are relevant to my condition, not race or insurance coverage, which have been used to allocate care in the past."
In other words, the computerized system is good because it is an improvement over a deeply flawed, inequitable, and racist system?
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End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 17.23
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