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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (June 12, 2003)
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Algebra through Calais) i/e message. Opinion The Battalion Page 5 # Thi Big brother is watching Department of Defense’s human tracking project, LifeLog, is a privacy invasion SARA FOLEY B ig Brother might not be watching everything right now, but soon the Department of Defense could be. The plans the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has will go further than simply watching a suspicious citizen’s actions. DARPA’s new project will record and analyze everything a per son sees, hears, reads, touches, says and the places they go through a digital diary system called LifeLog. While LifeLog is still in the developmental phases, the intention of DARPA’s project is to “trace the ‘threads’of an individual’s life” according to its Website, www.darpa.mil. Functioning as a type of digital diary similar to the current personal digital assistants that many business execu tives use today, LifeLog takes modern tech nology a step further through a system of cameras, sensors and microphones that record and analyze everything from Internet chatting to heartbeats. Information is then categorized and analyzed, making whoever has access to this account able to search through the database of his life to recall particular instances or memories, according to the Houston Chronicle. DARPA, the same agency that helped in the development of the Internet and upgrades of national security, sees the new device as a way to improve the memory of military leaders and analyze behavioral habits and routines to predict future occurrences. By teaching the computers to learn by experience, the personal digital assistant will be on its way to becoming a “personal digital partner” as well as a pocketbook record of a user’s entire life. The danger of this device, however, is more significant than DARPA may care to concede. While the users of LifeLog have the choice of which conver sations they want to save and discard and when to have their personal sensors on, the underlying threat is that the people they interact with are likely unaware that every word they say and every expressions on their faces are being documented. The possibility of anyone recording each interaction and experience will drive others to do the same, causing mass cases of tracking and analyzing until no conversation is truly private and nothing is completely personal. / Furthermore, while users may assume that they hold the only copy of their individual life database, the information will go to a national memory bank in the Pentagon to analyze possible national trends in illness outbreaks or or to identify possible terrorists. Those advantages are insignificant when compared to the fact that LifeLog holds the capability to rob users of their privacy and the confidentiality of anyone they interact with. Incidents and short conversations that many would rather forget will be stored permanently, not only in everyone else’s pocket, but in Washington, D.C. DARPA already has plans to trace “transac tional data” in the form of who e-mails are sent to and where purchases are made, under the Total Information Awareness database project, according to GlobalSecurity.org. If that isn’t intrusive enough for the Department of Defense, it wants to take it even further. This kind of personal information is not necessary for the government to obtain, and it is ridiculous for even the busiest of CEOs to record on a daily basis. Aside from the usage of a digital scrapbook, this system is useless and current technology can perform what little service this device will provide. The elimination of this project would not only save the American people a reported $7.3 mil lion in research contracts, according to the Chronicle, but something no American can put a price tag on — his freedom. Sara Foley is a sophomore journalism major. Graphic by Radhika Thirunarayanan. able, many subjects, 8S» ally, 774-0948. Battalion lassified Ivor rising • Easy Affordable > Effective formation, call 13-0349 irking TAMU? ■tment Living ol with waterfall, nd picnic tables •Ians and mini blinds ilities ewage, garbage ising for Fall as of . Normandy rrv Hollow KX Sq Cross St Cherry Si Church St. Univemo: Ol— — nolds Court > w Bush’s tax cut fails to provide relief for all More than eight million low and middle income families receive no tax cut hen President George W. Bush set out to gain support for his tax cut proposal, he claimed that it would provide relief for just about everyone. “My jobs and growth plan would reduce tax rates for everyone who pays income tax,” he said in his April 26 radio address. The words of the Bush administra tion, however, have since proven false. Ari Fleischer, then White House press secretary, pushed for the enact ment of Bush's tax cut “to make sure that the economy can grow and that jobs can be created, so that when our men and women in the military return home, they'll have jobs to come home to.” Then, in his May 29 press brief ing, Fleischer elaborated on the pres ident’s words: “And, of course, for people in the (lowest income) 10 percent bracket, they benefit the most from it, and (they are) the lowest income workers in America ... this certainly does deliver tax relief to the people who pay income taxes.” None of these statements turned out to be true. The latest tax cut does not provide relief for everyone pay ing income tax, is not necessary for returning troops, and is not benefi cial to Americans who fall into the lower tax brackets. Obviously, those Americans who serve in the military full-time do not need to worry about looking for a job when they return home. Also, employers must grant those return ing reservists positions similar to the jobs they held before they left. In fact, a business is legally bound to do so, unless it can prove serious hardship, according to the Federal Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994. Though more businesses may be able to claim hardship given the current state of the economy, this will still not result in an overabun dance of out-of-work reservists, especially not one massive enough to warrant a $350 billion tax cut. Still, it should not matter if the tax cut benefits American workers who are, as Bush says, “America’s greatest economic strength.” But, unfortunately, this tax cut does not. An analysis by the Urban Institute- Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center shows unequivocally that 8.1 million Americans who fall into low and middle income tax brackets receive no tax cut under the legisla tion. It is not as if these people were left out when Congress trimmed the tax cut to $350 billion. Even under the Bush administration's proposed plan, they would have gotten no tax relief. Contrast the 8.1 million average taxpayers left out of the legislation with the 184,000 taxpayers with incomes of greater than $1 million. The latter will be given approxi mately $17 billion in tax cuts in 2003 alone. This exclusion of eight million taxpayers from the law, along with the concentration of tax benefits for high-income taxpayers, makes the legislation much less effective in boosting the economy for the short term. It amounts to less revenue for the federal government, making it less able to buy goods and services from the private sector. Furthermore, economic theory states that people who fall into the lower tax brackets are more likely to spend tax-cut dol lars, as opposed to high-income peo ple, who generally save the money. It is when the money received from a tax cut is spent that the demand for goods and services increases, a char acteristic essential to improving the economy in the near term. As an astute politician. Bush knows this. In his radio address, he quoted small businessman Mike Kovach as saying, “Anytime you can improve the bottom line of main stream business, it's good for the city, it's good for the state and it's great for the nation. It all trickles up, instead of trickling down.” Why, then, were these taxpayers left out of the new tax cut law? When asked this question, Fleischer defended the legislation, while plainly contradicting his previ ous declaration that people in the lowest tax bracket would benefit most. “If any taxpayers did not get tax relief in this bill, it is because it was such a priority to get them a headstart on tax cuts in 2001,” he said. “They had a two-year headstart because they were prioritized over upper-income taxpayers. The upper income taxpayers had to wait for tax relief for this bill.” Unfortunately, it was a clarification, which for eight million people, came too late. Midhat Farooqi is a senior genetics major. MIDHAT FAROOQI MAIL CALL Antitrust laws meant to be fair for consumers and corporations In response to Mike Walters' June 11 column: Mr. Walters has clearly missed the purpose of antitrust legislation. If any entity, be it public or private, is allowed to operate unchecked, it can only lead to disaster. Antitrust laws were enacted to keep large cor porations from charging excessive fees for their services. Naturally, as Mr. Walters mentioned, large companies are able to do business effi ciently. This efficiency is a byproduct of their size. If a large corporation is challenged in the open mar ket, it can drastically reduce the fees for its serv ices in order to undercut any startups that may come along forcing them from the market place. Antitrust laws were designed to keep fees charged for service at a rate that is both fair to the consumer and to the corporation. This kind of legislation needs to be policed by the public, not abolished by it. The kind of sweeping changes that Mr. Walters proposes only swing the pendulum entirely in the other direction. Then we would be back to where we started with utility companies charging too much for their services. There is currently a monopoly in the cable market in Bryan and College Station. I guaran tee that this service is cheaper in locations with more than one provider. One solution may be for the government to buy the phone lines and other related hardware from the Bell family. Is it not, after all, the gov ernment's responsibility to maintain the infra structure? Could one imagine how expensive travel would be if the highways were privately owned? In order for equitable changes to be had by all, moderation is in order. Robert Stackhouse Class of 2005