In the aftermath of the horrible events in the U.S., the biggest war may be fought within each of us.
Our heads tell us we must go back to business as usual. We keep hearing that if we don’t get on with our lives, the terrorists will have won.
Our hearts tell us that something has changed forever.
Experience tells me our hearts are right, and that the current climate of fear will have long-lasting and real effects.
You feel it when a noisy plane flies over downtown or the university campus. People reflexively look up, thinking the unthinkable.
You certainly see it at the airports, where physical changes were made almost instantly. X-ray scanners were hauled up from the bowels of the baggage room and put front and centre.
Those handy electronic check-in machines sit forlornly in the corner, unplugged and lifeless.
When I visited the airport a few days after the tragedy, stranded travellers had pulled chairs in front of the kiosks and were playing cards. A few metres away, nail files, hairpins and even paper clips were being taken from passengers in an exercise that was one part enhanced security and nine parts Kabuki theatre.
Several years ago, with my computer scientist hat on, I helped some entrepreneurs who wanted to design a three-dimensional X-ray system. It would allow luggage screeners to take a sort of virtual reality tour through your still-unopened bag, looking at things from different angles. This field is still the subject of active research (e.g. at Nottingham Trent University, see “Web watch” below) and there’s actually been a prototype machine delivered to the FAA in the U.S. for testing.
As for our project, after doing the technological legwork, the company just couldn’t make the business case. It would cost a lot more than a conventional X-ray scanner. More importantly, it would delay the flow of passengers through the screening point.
It’s been widely reported that the target has been “one bag every five seconds,” at U.S. airports. After the events of Sept. 11, let’s hope that statistic is relegated to history.
“As long as it takes” must become the operative term if passengers are to be, and to feel, safe in the air.
Heightened security will have implications even for people who never set foot in a plane or an airport.
There is serious talk in the U.S. about introducing a national ID card that must be carried at all times. Canada might well need to follow suit. This sort of “internal passport” is common in other countries.
When I travelled last month in Colombia and Venezuela, I had to produce my passport at each new hotel, and my local colleagues dutifully pulled out their national ID cards. Our numbers were recorded so that police, if they were so inclined, could follow our travels.
Of course, the ability to track your every movement is the hallmark of the very societies we are opposing. Yet, the U.S. has been inching towards a national ID card for the last decade.
Drivers’ licences are the obvious candidate, though not everyone has one. Future licences might well be “smart cards,” or they may use a technology called PDF417, which is basically a two-dimensional barcode.
Unlike the little product codes in the supermarket, these babies can hold 11K of information, enough to tell a heck of a lot about you. Put another one on the windshield of your car and that time-honoured police request “licence and registration” can be reduced to “click, click.”
The neck hairs of privacy advocates shoot right up when you talk about this type of technology.
It potentially allows lots of people to see lots of information about you, even things that you don’t even know are on the card.
For example, you might be the kind of person your government doesn’t want to see buying a gun. You walk in to a gun shop, present your card, and are told to come back after some waiting period.
What actually happens is that your ID card has squealed on you, and you are now the subject of some rather intense scrutiny, all without your knowledge.
Of course, if it’s a terrorist who wants to buy that gun (though they favour 69-cent box cutters, apparently) most people are all in favour of raising the highest alarm.
But what percentage of the population falls into that category, and what’s the burden on the rest of us in terms of lost freedom and personal privacy?
Smart cards and PDF417 bar codes could carry all kinds of personal information. “Profiling,” to identify potential security risks has come out of the closet in the wake of the U.S. disasters. Systems of this nature are already in place both in the U.S. and Canada, either in formal procedures or in the minds of relevant authorities.
The question, of course, is when do we step over the line? If we move the security bar higher and higher, we truly do give the terrorists what they want, a daily climate of fear.
To probe deeper into these vital issues of privacy, there are two important coming events at the University of Calgary. On Oct. 18, we will host a special seminar on “Privacy in a Technological World.”
It will feature practical advice from the Privacy Commissioners of Alberta and Ontario, technology law specialist Martin Kratz, and other experts.
On the following day, the Calgary Institute for the Humanities will have a community seminar called “Private Lives, Public Knowledge?”
Together we will find the balance between privacy and security, but it won’t be an easy road.
Web Watch:
* ON 3D X-RAY SYSTEMS:
www.globaltechnoscan.com/23rdAug-29thAug/xrays.htm www.eee.ntu.ac.uk/research/vision/asobania
* On PDF417 TECHNOLOGY:
www.pdf417.com www.networkusa.org/fingerprint/page3/fp-big-bro-dmv-id-card.html
* ON PRIVACY EVENTS IN OCTOBER:
www.ucalgary.ca/cted/esecurity
www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/Others/CIH
