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Date: 11 Jan 1984 1353-PST
From: Rob-Kling <Kling%UCI@USC-ECL>
Subject: Review- Rise of the Computer State
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                  Rise of the Computer State by David Burnham
                  Published by Random House, New York - 1983.


                              Review by Rob Kling
                 Department of Information and Computer Science
                        University of California, Irvine
                             (KLING.UCI@RAND-relay)


          This book examines the ways that Federal agencies and elected

     officials have employed computer-based information systems (CBIS) to

     increase their power unfairly.  Burnham's main theses are:  1) that

     CBIS have often been effective media for extending the surveillance

     potential of the host organization;  2) overall, citizens have lost

     substantial power in their routine dealings with computer-using

     organizations;  3) attempts to regulate the use of CBIS containing

     personal records have been frail and largely ineffective relative to

     the scale of operations that should be regulated;  4) some

     organizations which employ sophisticated CBIS for intelligence, such

     as the National Security Agency, are unaccountable to the larger

     public.


          These theses have a sinister tinge.  As we enter 1984, the United

     States is far from a police state.  However, Burnham fears that the

     slow, steady, consistent adoption of new surveillance systems and the

     expansion of existing ones is eroding democratic political processes

     in the United States.  If he is correct, these are arguably the most

     important consequences of computerization in the United States.


          This is a trade book aimed at the same audience that reads

     "Megatrends", "The Third Wave", or "Fifth Generation".  Unlike these

     highly popular books which are permeated with happy talk about the

     social possibilities of widespread computerization, "The Rise of the

     Computer State" examines the seamy underside of organizations that

     employ CBIS to collect, manipulate, and communicate sensitive data

     about all of us.


          Burnham, a New York Times reporter, has written this book for a

     popular audience.  Its strengths lie in Burnham's sensitivity to the

     civil liberties issues in practices that might simply appear

     "expeditious" and in his eye for graphic detail in explaining how

     organizations employ CBIS to make their operations efficient and

     "effective."


          Burnham examines two themes that link computerization with a

     certain kind of organizational power:  surveillance of "targeted"

     people or groups and opinion polling.  In a separate chapter he

     examines the National Security Agency which he labels "the ultimate

     computer bureaucracy."


     SURVEILLANCE


          Some organizations act under legislative mandates that many

     people would label "pro-social".  For example, the Bureau of Child

     Support of the Los Angeles District Attorney's office uses CBIS to

     seize California State tax refunds from certain runaway fathers who

     are delinquent in their child support payments.  A second group act

     within the boundaries of legal, but unduly permissive information

     practices.  For example, a company called U.D. Registry provides

     landlords with histories of disputes with previous landlords,

     maintains records which are usually unknown to tenants and does little

     to insure that they are treated fairly.  A third group of

     organizations engage in action that are either illegal or nearly so.

     For example, U.S. Army's surveillance of liberal and leftist activists

     in the late 1960's, extended well beyond the scope of "national

     security." Burnham portrays these activities with sharp detail that

     give color to routine practices and their participants.


          Burnham is a staunch civil libertarian and sees all social

     surveillance as problematic.  It is easiest to criticize organizations

     like the U.S. Army when they intrude upon political minorities and

     thereby threaten First amendment rights.  It is also easy to criticize

     some of the "holes" in CBIS such as those operated by U.D. Registry,

     which are unknown to people on whom records are kept, and who are not

     legally obligated to enable people to see their records, correct

     errors, or annotate their files case of disputes.


          Burnham's criticisms reach much further than identifying the

     problems with CBIS employed by the second and third groups of

     organizations.  He questions the first group as well.  Burnham's

     questions about organizations and systems for tracking runaway fathers

     who leave their children on welfare illustrates of his concerns about

     social strategies which depend upon extensive surveillance for

     enforcement:  1) will the original target group be slowly enlarged

     until it is much larger than originally intended in the enabling

     legislation?  2) can the information system be extended by local

     officials for surveillance upon "others who fall into disfavor?"


          Burnham reports how the scope of these systems has expanded from

     locating parents who were avoiding child support payments and whose

     children were receiving funds from Federal welfare programs to include

     any parent whose (ex)spouse seeks the other parent of their children.

     Burnham notes that there are few constitutional limits on the scope of

     such an surveillance system.  Why not, for example, expand its scope

     so that creditors can track down their debtors?  Or why not expand it

     expand it so that people can locate lost relatives and old friends?

     While these "information needs" are less heart wrenching than the

     situations of women who turn to public assistance when their

     ex-husbands refuse to pay court-mandated child support, they are also

     "pro-social." Burnham argues that little prevents surveillance systems

     such as this one from being slowly expanded to track ever larger

     groups of people than legislative sentiment and a fragile coalition of

     legislators who are sympathetic to civil liberties values.


          Burnham uses this example to illustrate another key feature of

     recent surveillance systems:  records systems which are set up for

     rather narrow purposes of one organization are used by investigators

     in another organization.  The Parent Locator System, for example, is

     not a particular, specialized CBIS.  Rather, it is a set of procedures

     and arrangements which enable certain investigators to send lists of

     "missing parents" to the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security

     Administration, the Defense Department, the Veterans Administration,

     and the National Personnel Center.  Each of these organizations honors

     these requests, searches its CBIS for the current locations of the

     "missing parents" and returns the information to the requestors on

     magnetic tape.


          While many CBIS could be operated as manual systems, these

     searches would be prohibitively expensive add-ons with manual record

     systems.  However, the marginal costs of search are affordable with

     computerized record systems.  The Parent Locator "System" is one of

     many "matching programs" in which public agencies use existing files

     to search for deviants.  Organizational payroll files have been

     "matched" against welfare files to find gainfully employed people who

     are committing welfare fraud.  State Department of Motor Vehicle files

     have been matched with Selective Service files to identify eligible 18

     year olds who have not registered for the draft.  In each of these

     cases, the records of thousands of people who have broken no laws are

     matched to find the few that have.  Burnham finds the principle

     offensive, even though the applications are expedient and have so far

     have been aimed at lawbreakers.  In his eyes, expediency and

     efficiency should not be preeminent values for administrative action.



          PRIVACY REGULATIONS


          Burnham briefly examines some of the Federal privacy initiatives

     of the last decade, including the Privacy Act of 1974, the proposals

     of the Privacy Protection Study Commission, and the 1978 Financial

     Right to Privacy Act.  These laws have provided minimal protections,

     and important protections of the Federal Right to Privacy Act have

     been undermined in implementation by Federal agencies under Ford,

     Carter, and Reagan.  Only a few of the 155 recommendations reported by

     the Privacy Protection Study Commission in 1977 have been enacted in

     law.


          Burnham mentions these laws and examines some of their

     limitations.  However, he doesn't evaluate their potential.  Would

     many of the problems of CBIS operated by firms like the U.D. Registry

     be ameliorated if they were brought under laws like the Fair Credit

     Reporting Act?  Would civil liberties be better protected if the

     remaining recommendations of the Privacy Protection Study Commission

     were enacted in law?  Unfortunately, Burnham is mute about these

     possibilities.


          Burnham is strongest in identifying concrete problems.  Most

     serious there is no permanent institutional counterweight to Federal

     agencies when they propose new, more efficient, or enlarged personal

     record systems.  Agencies such as the FBI, the IRS, or the Social

     Security Administration can return to Congress every few years with

     proposals for massive CBIS which have problematic privacy aspects and

     expect that sooner or later, the civil libertarians who restricted

     their last proposal will be weaker or pre-occupied with other matters.


     POLLING


          Burnham examines opinion polling as another form of

     organizational intelligence which has been rendered substantially more

     efficient and sophisticated by computers.  He views opinion polling by

     elected officials and organizations which are campaigning for specific

     legislation as selective intelligence which places the target public

     at an unfair disadvantage.  The main problem he sees in market

     research in the service of electoral politics is the extent to which

     it helps make propaganda less transparent and the public more

     manipulable by marketing strategists who target different messages to

     different groups.  While there is nothing new in political actors

     tailoring their appeals to different audiences, Burnham fears that the

     modern versions of sophistry are less obvious and consequently far

     more successful for those who can afford to employ them.


          He also views opinion polls as easily subject to manipulation by

     politicians seeking legitimacy or publicity.  Polling is not simply a

     reporting device.  Pollers gain leverage relative to the larger public

     since much of the audience for polls will read headlines and short

     news items which distort the scientific meaning of a poll by

     neglecting to explain the nature of the sample, the detailed

     distribution of responses, or the questions asked.  Political polling

     is not only "information gathering;" it can be a devise for persuading

     larger publics about the popularity of one's position.


     NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY


          In a dramatic chapter, Burnham reports how the National Security

     Agency (NSA) has operated under a charter which has remained secret it

     was initiated by President Truman in 1952.  The NSA specializes in

     electronic surveillance.  A large fraction of its efforts probably go

     to observing military force deployments and strategic resources

     worldwide.  Burnham reports how the NSA has also illegally

     eavesdropped on a significant fraction of international telephone

     calls and telex messages which leave the United States.


          Burnham reports on the character of specific programs of domestic

     surveillance which were illegal.  According to Burnham, the NSA

     developed files on political dissidents including civil rights

     activists, antiwar activists, members of Congress, and ordinary

     citizens who were critical of official government policies.  While

     most of the domestic political surveillance appeared to take place in

     the late 1960's through mid-1970's, the shroud of secrecy that

     surrounds the NSA makes it difficult to have significant Congressional

     oversight of its policies and practices.


          During the last 5 years, the NSA has moved to control

     cryptographic research in the United States.  Recently developed

     encryption schemes are based on sophisticated algorithms which require

     digital circuits for rapid coding and decoding.  Some of the new

     schemes even allow the code keys to be public, rather than secret.  As

     more business operations in the United States is computerized,

     organizations seek ways to protect the privacy of data such as large

     funds transfers.  Thus the market for efficient and effective data

     encryption devices has expanded beyond the intelligence community to

     include financial institutions.


          The NSA has recently taken control of this research out of the

     hands of the National Science Foundation, even though it has no

     publicly documented legal mandate for its action.  There are deep

     policy questions about whether national security is well served by the

     availability of cheap encrypting devices which are effectively

     unbreakable.  These questions are not being raised in public debates,

     nor does Burnham shed much light on them.  Rather he simply adopts the

     libertarian critique of surveillance.  Like other political labels

     with strong moral content, it has been abused as a cover for unsavory

     actions carried out by government operatives.  The term in not wholly

     vacuous and Burnham glosses most of the knotty policy issues.


     TOWARD A POLICE STATE?


          Burnham's theses are loosely fabricated from dramatic examples.

     He does not offer explicit hypotheses, strong organizing concepts, and

     a way of placing his examples in a context which enables a reader to

     understand their overall significance.  Examples of bad outcomes can

     elicit sympathy for "victims." But systematic information about the

     frequency and extent of problems and abuses are necessary to

     demonstrate that the overall social setup within which they happen is

     badly flawed, corrupt, or perverse.  Some of his examples of people

     victimized by slips in CBIS and organizational practices suggest that

     Kafka has provided better guiding images than Orwell for appreciating

     a computer-based, mobile, organizational society.


          Burnham has little taste for irony, and explores Orwellian abuse

     rather than Kafkaesque happenings.  Do the events Burnham describes

     indicate that Federal agencies and other large computer users are

     pushing the the US along a path of political development that is

     leading to a much less democratic form of Federal government?

     Unfortunately, Burnham does not describe the changing nature of

     Congressional oversight and public accountability sufficiently well to

     provide a clear answer to that question.  He succeeds in generating

     sentiments in favor of this hypothesis by his accumulated cases of

     organizational seaminess and occasional abuse.  But he relies heavily

     upon a reader's distrust of elected officials and large bureaucracies

     to help cement his case.  He also relies upon general theses about

     power, such as Lord Acton's maxim.  Unchecked power often corrupts and

     organizations are often less willing to be fair to their clients than

     efficient and autonomous.  But general principles do not make the

     particular case since the variations in actual organizational

     practices are significant and vast.


          One peculiar feature of contemporary police states, such as those

     in Eastern Europe and Latin America, is the extent to which they have

     relied upon low technologies for extensive social control and even

     mass terror.  Many abusive ruling cliques rely upon neighborhood

     informants, secret trials, and mysterious disappearances to maintain

     control.  They don't need database management systems, teleprocessing,

     and spy satellites.  Low technology strategies are especially

     effective in "small town" societies.


          Burnham's implicit argument is that less obtrusive forms of

     surveillance and social control can harm the political culture of

     liberal democracies.  CBIS are attractive to administrators and

     politicians because they promise heightened efficiencies and sometimes

     enhanced fairness in providing services to large mobile populations.

     However, the anecdotes of errors with a human cost and even abuses

     which Burnham piles on the reader, illustrate problems but do not make

     his case.


          Burnham's strongest case is his critique of the NSA's abuses of

     authority.  Like, the secret Law Enforcement Intelligence Units, much

     of the problem with the NSA comes from its shroud of secrecy and

     freedom from significant legislative oversight.  It's use of

     computer-based monitoring systems is incidental to its problematic

     place in American political life.


          I suspect that one basic issue is accountability of these

     agencies to the public through the legislatures.  At times this is no

     easy task when the administrative agencies can shroud their actions

     with the complexities of high technologies.  There is a strong case to

     be made that in the clashes between branches of government,

     administrative agencies have found legal and technological loopholes

     to temporarily free themselves from regulatory restraint.

     Congressional actions are not always right.  But there is an argument

     that administrative agencies have been able to exploit computer-based

     technologies to shift the balance of governmental power away from

     elected officials.  This systematic shift of power has been best

     documented in the case of local governments.  It is likely to be

     happening at other governmental levels as well.


     COMPUTERS AND POLITICS


          Burnham is sensitive to the shifts of power to executive

     agencies.  But he is at a loss to explain them very well.  He misses

     the deeper politics of computing.  I find a clue to his misperception,

     a very common one, in his reference to "the computer's system of

     thinking." For Burnham, CBIS are simply highly structured, logical,

     possibly hierarchical information processing "tools." He misses the

     ways in which CBIS designs often reflect the "systems of thinking" of

     those who propose them.  CBIS promoters may label their preferences as

     "required by computers" to help their case, but they often ignore or

     discourage many technical and administrative alternatives.


          Many CBIS are usefully viewed as forms of social organization.

     They are composed of many layers of data, programs, and communications

     support stretched across different organizations.  Those who oversee

     them need some ability to appreciate technical alternatives and also

     have some substantive expertise in the organizational functions which

     have computer support.  This dual expertise is rare, particularly

     among elected officials at all levels of government.  As a

     consequence, they have trouble in providing sensible guidance to

     executive agency staff.


     QUALITY OF BURNHAM'S ANALYSIS


          I would like to like this book more than I do.  I like Burnham's

     eye for detail and his relentless questions about the underside of

     computer-based surveillance systems.  Some new data brokering

     organizations start up each year.  Each year, many existing

     organizations expand the scope and scale of their record keeping.

     Laws and administrative practices also change slowly each year.  Over

     ten year periods, these gradual small scale changes accumulate.

     Periodic reviews of these practices are useful.  As a consequence of

     continuing changes in organizational practices, legal arrangements,

     and technology, studies published in the early 1970's such as Westin

     and Baker's "Databanks in a Free Society" or James Rules' "Public

     Surveillance and Private Lives" have become dated.  Both of these

     studies pre-date the use of computer matching, and several Federal

     privacy initiatives.


          Unfortunately, this book is weak in analysis.  Even the chapter

     headings don't guide the argument.  The first three chapters are

     labelled "surveillance," "data bases," and "power." However, themes of

     power, surveillance, and data bases are strong elements in each of

     them.  The chapter labelled "power" primarily examines political

     polling.  This lax labelling of chapters signifies the way that

     Burnham eschews tough analysis in favor of easy sentimentalizing.


          It should be hard for Burnham, a reporter and hence a kind of

     intelligence agent, to find observation, reporting, and persuasion to

     be inherently sinister acts.  However, Burnham colors his narrative so

     that people who administer a CBIS are stigmatized in descriptions such

     as "(speaking) in the quiet monotones of many long-time government

     employees," or are "slightly Mephistopholean." People who sympathize

     with civil libertarian values are portrayed without any frailties.

     Burnham is deeply suspicious of pollsters and politicians who

     manipulate the public with numbers, but he is very adept at

     manipulating his audience with images.  These images which equate

     personal goodness with political philosophy grossly mislead.


          Despite these limitations, "The Rise of the Computer State" is

     particularly important because it helps articulate and illustrate

     important questions about computing and social power.  Unfortunately,

     there is no other up-to-date inquiry into organizational surveillance

     and high technology.


          "The Rise of the Computer State" is an important contribution to

     the tiny stream of literature which examines the political dimensions

     of computer-based technologies in public life.  I hope that many

     people read this book despite its analytical flaws.  It helps

     dramatize the current problems of computer-based surveillance systems.

     Burnham's graphic episodes can help give people who are not intimate

     with CBIS a keen appreciation of the dilemmas which their use and

     users are now creating.  It can help more systematic investigators by

     providing a rich set of clues from which to continue this inquiry.

     These questions will not go away after 1984 has passed.