TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/062491/0624310.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.7 KB | 118 lines

                                                                                TECHNOLOGY, Page 62

Peddling Big Brother


Foreign governments are snapping up surveillance systems that are
produced -- but proscribed -- in the West

By PHILIP ELMER-DEWITT/WASHINGTON -- With reporting by John Dunn/
Sydney and Narunart Prapanya/Bangkok


    As a newcomer to the world of computers, the government
of Thailand was surprised and flattered last summer when it won a
prize for being a "hero of the information age" from the
Smithsonian Institution and Computerworld magazine. The award,
which focused world attention on the Interior Ministry's efforts
to computerize the country's social services, proved to be a
mixed blessing. Technocrats may admire systems like Bangkok's,
which by 2006 will have stored vital data on 65 million Thais
in a single, integrated computer network. But civil libertarians
are appalled. Simon Davies, an Australian expert on such
technology for the watchdog group Privacy International, says
Bangkok's prizewinning program is, potentially, "one of the most
repressive surveillance systems the world has ever seen."

    Thailand's population data-base system -- the largest of
its kind -- has become a symbol for an alarming trend. Even as
Western nations place new limits on what they permit computers
to do with sensitive personal data, some of their biggest
computer firms have begun selling to Third World governments
systems that are far more invasive than any permitted back home.
In some cases, though not necessarily Thailand's, computers
with vast potential for misuse are being sold to governments
with long histories of human-rights violations.

    At first glance the Thai system, which is being considered
for possible adoption by Indonesia and the Philippines, seems
harmless enough. Every citizen over age 15 will be required to
carry a card bearing a color photo, various pertinent facts
(name, address and so on) and an identification number. Most
Thais are happy to get their IDs, which distinguish citizens
from noncitizens (including a large population of refugees) and
simplify all sorts of bureaucratic transactions, from receiving
health-care benefits to enrolling a child in school.

    But behind the cards are a $50 million computer system and
sophisticated software that could enable a Big Brother
government to create a dossier quickly that would tell it just
about anything it wanted to know about anybody. The program,
which runs on three top-of-the-line Control Data mainframes, is
known as a relational data base, and it permits bureaucrats to
correlate the files of otherwise disparate government offices.
If the necessary links to the revenue and police departments are
put in place, a few key taps could cross-reference criminal
records to tax records to religious and family information in
order to draw a startlingly detailed description of any
individual or group. Thai officials say they have no plans to
create those links.

    Most industrialized nations have evolved legal codes to
protect their citizens from such invasions of privacy. The basic
principle is laid out in the U.S. Privacy Act of 1974, which at
least in theory restricts the government from taking computer
data gathered for one purpose (say, the census) and using them
for another purpose (say, tax collection). Another guiding
precept is that unique numerical identifiers -- like Thailand's
ID numbers -- should be avoided because they make dossier
preparation temptingly easy. That is why the American Civil
Liberties Union gets so upset when a Social Security number is
used beyond its original intent.

    The potential for abuse of such systems has been amply
demonstrated. Until quite recently, the white-ruled government
of South Africa employed pass-card and fingerprint systems,
running on computers supplied by IBM and the British firm ICL,
to enforce travel restrictions on the black population. This
practice eventually led to a U.S.-government ban on the sale of
computers to any apartheid-enforcing agency.

    Today Israel uses a work-permit card system, running on
U.S. equipment (the name of the supplier is an Israeli secret),
to monitor the movement of Palestinians living in the occupied
territories. Singapore, known for its strict regulation of
everything from littering to drug peddling, has purchased more
than $12 million worth of computer equipment from NEC, including
a machine-readable ID-card system (with laser-engraved
thumbprint) and an automated fingerprint-identification system.

    Such systems are particularly attractive to governments
troubled by civilian unrest. Guatemala, where death squads have
been linked to hundreds of extrajudicial executions and
"disappearances," purchased computer surveillance software from
Israel in the early 1980s. Within the next few weeks, Taiwan is
expected to award contracts worth $270 million for its own
"residential-information system." Among the bidders: Unisys,
Digital Equipment Corp., NEC and ICL.

    The sale of these systems will continue to spread unless
the U.S. and other vendor nations take steps to stop it. At
present the U.S. State and Commerce departments have strict
rules governing the export of weapons systems and computers with
potential military uses. But with the exception of the South
African ban, there are no regulations preventing the sale of
relational-data-base systems to countries that lack basic
constitutional safeguards. "The U.S. claims to have a role as
the moral leader in protecting freedom and democracy," complains
Marc Rotenberg, Washington director of Computer Professionals
for Social Responsibility. "But we are becoming
surveillance-technology merchants to the world."