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December
19, 2002, 2:00 p.m. By James Plummer |
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ARPA
is at it again. Sure, the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency laid the groundwork in the 1970's
for the very Internet you're using right now. And more recently, you've
probably heard much about the Information Awareness Office run by Iran-Contra
vet John Poindexter, with their proud seal of a crypto-Masonic pyramid's
all-seeing eye casting a death ray over the entire globe. Or whatever
that's supposed to be. If you're a regular reader of the National Consumer
Coalition's privacy website, you've read about how they want to ID
people by how they walk, and how they're plugged in to the database
that screens at check-in air passengers' credit, travel, criminal
history, et cetera ad infinitum.
And now, if DARPA's newest mad plan works out, those swarms of unionized federal government employees at the airport will have a new toy to annoy you with — robot sensors sniffing you to make sure you're not a smelly terrorist.
Yes, DARPA's Army Research Office, a cousin of Poindexter's Information Awareness Office (with a less-scary pyramid in its logo) published on December 13 a "Presolicitation Notice" of bids for its new "Odortype Detection Program." According to the full 18-page notice, the ARO hopes to have the technology fully functional and ready for use some time around 2008. The thinking behind the plan is that like your genetic code, every person's odor is unique — in fact, it's determined by your genetic code. If the whiz kids at DARPA can prove that, they want to move on to develop filters that will distinguish between the smell of your genes and the smell of whatever foods or drugs you've been putting in your body. To that end, "It is envisioned that this will involve experiments using both rodents and humans." Since the idea behind this program evidently sprang from observations on how mice react to the "chemosignals" given off by each others' "urinary odor," such experiments could easily prove to be an . . . interesting . . . use of your hard-earned tax dollars.
What does all this mean for privacy? Technology itself is neutral, of course, but there is often a case to be made against massive expenditures of tax dollars to develop it. If, a few years from now, "electronic noses" and "biological sensors" sniff out your genetic code and your breakfast and subsequently offer you personalized advertisements as you stroll through the subway a la Minority Report, it won't have been because of voluntary choices made in the marketplace. It will rather have been due to the efforts of men in white coats sitting on piles of involuntarily confiscated tax dollars and rat urine. It's a kind of state-sponsored distortion of a free society.
And if you ask me, it stinks.
— James Plummer is a policy analyst at Consumer Alert, Washington, D.C., who originated and publishes www.nccprivacy.org.