Society: News and Commentary: CG In The News: Every Move You Make

Every Move You Make

Philip K. Howard
The Washington Post, April 4, 2004

In The Naked Crowd, Jeffrey Rosen argues that Americans should be cautious in giving government unfettered access to certain modern technology. Scanning machines have been invented that can literally render a person naked, showing on the screen what someone would look like without clothes. Databases reveal where we go, what we purchase, whom we phone and what Web sites we visit.

Most Americans, Rosen believes, don't care about exposing themselves to "mass dataveillance." Faced with the threat of terrorists, we are understandably eager to embrace whatever we're told will be useful to apprehend them. Once we pause for a second, however, we see that these preparations lend themselves to potential abuse. All one needs to do is think of Richard Nixon and John Mitchell tracking down antiwar protesters and prosecuting them for minor infractions.

Rosen is not against the use of technology for security -- he recognizes that we "should be free, in a pluralistic society, to trade liberty and privacy for higher levels of security." His sensible point is that the technology should be effective to accomplish the job. The problem, which he explores in detail, is that while computerized data can be extremely useful when one has a specific target to track down, monitoring vast data banks in a country of 300 million people is more like a wild goose chase that merely diverts law enforcement energies, with the offensive byproduct of detaining countless blameless people. The widespread use of surveillance cameras in England has proved useful for catching traffic infractions but, studies show, has had no impact on crime except in lonely parking garages.

Rosen, a law professor and legal columnist for the New Republic, is no knee-jerk civil libertarian. The most important tool for achieving security, he explains, is the use of human judgment. The security personnel at the Israeli airline El Al, instead of relying on computer algorithms or random searches, watch out for signs of nervousness and "tend to single out Arabic-looking men, women traveling alone, and 'shabbily dressed people.' " For example, El Al security screeners pulled aside a young pregnant Irish woman when she couldn't explain adequately why she was going to the Middle East. It turned out that her Palestinian boyfriend had asked her to bring bags to relatives. Though she did not know it, the bags contained explosives.

Americans reject subjective approaches to security as a breach of our "unshakable commitment to equality." Profiling is politically incorrect. So we "see frail old ladies frisked like street hoodlums, their high-heeled shoes at their sides and their arms spread helplessly as they are wanded by uniformed guards."

The psyche of a culture that is indifferent to privacy while obsessive about individual rights is the hard issue that Rosen tackles in The Naked Crowd. Americans like the technological approach, he argues, because it purports to be objective and evenhanded. We don't mind the potential intrusion into our privacy in part because the overseeing authority is distant.

But our distrust of authority on the spot leads us to reject systems of security and accountability that are effective. A common theme here is fear of human judgment -- fear that leads to the blind, thoughtless embrace of any solution that purports to insulate us from any human acts, whether it be from terrorists or from security officials whose job it is to catch the terrorists. Rosen believes that this process gains momentum from scare-mongering that serves the purposes of both the media and our political leaders.

Rosen argues that what we need in place of reflexive fear is measured judgment and leadership. There is no technological silver bullet, no software program that guarantees security and perfect equality. All these vital social objectives -- tracking down terrorists, safeguarding privacy, holding people accountable (including government officials) -- require allocating authority to someone to make deliberate judgments on behalf of the common good. Rosen thinks that a congressional committee is a good place to sort through the various technological solutions. The scanning machine that reveals you naked can be modified, he explains, to make body parts an indistinguishable blob. Similarly, effective I.D. cards can be developed that do not permit the tracking of each and every life activity.

But today, Rosen warns, we get the worst of both worlds. By putting an electronic profile into the hands of remote authorities, we risk intrusion into our private lives. Meanwhile, in the name of privacy and individual rights, we lose the social accountability needed to keep society safe and free from fear.