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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.
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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