Re: "And who shall guard the guardians?"

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 9:57 PM 7/31/96, Martin Minow wrote:
>On Cyperpunks recently, Tim May wrote:
>
>>The Latin maxim "And who shall guard the guardians?" has some relevance to
>>the headlong rush into converting the U.S. into even more of a security
>>state than it is now.
>
>About 30 (thirty) years ago, I asked the same question at a large
>computer conference. Then, a representative of the FBI was presenting
>the NCIC computer system that was under development at the time. This
>system gives local officials access to a national database of arrest
>and conviction information.

Abuses of the NCIC system are legend. I once received the home address (and
other particulars) involving the famously-reclusive Thomas Pynchon. (The
author of "Gravity's Rainbow," "V," "The Crying of Lot 49," and "Vineland"
has not ever given a public interview, no photos are known to exist of him
since his 1954 high school yearbook photo, and even his residence was
unknown.)

Pynchon, as I have noted before here, lived for almost 10 years about 3
miles from me; I may have passed him many times in local stores and on the
street. Without knowing it, of course.

A "fan" of his used the NCIC system, the data base into which all drivers
and many others are placed, to locate him. At least this fan did not stalk
and kill him, as has happened in the past with NCIC data base accesses.

As we computerize the Surveillance State, the possibilities for abuse and
for repression (if not by Clinton, then by others, or by Aldrich Ames-type
situations) become astronomical. The "key registration" and "national I.D.
card" proposals just square or cube the problem.

--Tim May


Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
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Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
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