Big brother government: Profiling Techniques (05:20)

Big brother government: Profiling Techniques

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Welcome to lesson three topic four: Big brother governments: profiling techniques. In the previous topics we’ve been talking a lot about privacy on an individual level. When we discussed metadata, we where already getting into the world of profiling techniques a bit. What profiling techniques all have in common, is that large amounts of data are being collected, edited, if necessary enriched, after which some automated editing is taking place. The outcome of those techniques is a score, number, percentage of a chance, or a profile. This outcome is being used to create distinctions between people. So you could say this is not influencing you on a personal level directly. Although these techniques can be used to influence society as as whole and therefore it is indirectly influencing you. There for your privacy is not only important to you, but for everyone! Right there we can flush the “I have nothing to hide” argument down the toilet once again.

Now we have a wider understanding of profiling techniques, let’s take a look at a few definitions of some of them:

• Datamining: scanning enormous amounts of data looking for patterns. For example: the IRS sees that recently divorced people are relatively late with filling in their tax forms.-
• Risk-scoring: the calculation of someones credit-worthiness for example. Is this group of people paying in time? Banks use this.
• Machine learning: An automated simulation technique that scans through enormous amounts of data, learns from it and then goes on looking for other patters based on what it’s learned. After tons of simulations the computer can find patters that nobody expected to see in the first place.
• Profiling: The goal you’d like to reach, while using machine learning and datamining is the way to get there. A profile is a category in which you can place people in, like I described in the databrokers section.
• Algorithms: Software that’s just handling a certain task or procedure based on a mathematical formula.

A good example of  a government using profiling techniques is, once again, the US government. Ever since nine eleven the amount of surveillance on US airports increased like crazy. Next to a stricter physical control, there is a hell of a lot of data being checked by profiling techniques before you can actually enter a plane. One example is the ATS-P-database: Automated Targeting System-Passengers. This system has been rolled out further after 9/11. It basically does three things: the first one is that it creates a file for every traveler, this file includes all your booking details. Who are you, where do you live, what are you doing, how do you look like, what is your fingerprint, what is your etnicity, level of income, military experience, are you married, and other questions you answers in your ESTA or Visa.

The second part of the ATS-P-database, is that it compares your information to the information of a variety of black-lists. One of them is the no-fly list, that basically compares your information to tens of thousands of names of potential terrorists. And the ATS-P database uses the Selectee list and the Expanded Selectee list. These are lists of people in which the groundwork of the claims of being suspicious is not solid enough yet. If you are on such a list, you can fly, but you will be double checked. And last but not least the Center for Disease Control also delivers a list of people that are not allowed to go on board because of health-issues.

In the final round, the ATS-P-database creates a risk-profile for every traveler. For creating such a profile, the ATS-P uses like thirty different databases. From these databases they get information like:

• If you’ve been to the US before. When, with who and where did you enter the country
• Your ESTA, so if you’ve ever been arrested, had a disease, had a psychiatric past, where you are going, where you are staying, your creditcard information and your IP adress
• If you’ve ever been checked when arriving in the US and what the border guard thought of you
• Your biometric identity: fingerprints, face-scan, that you gave away with your earlier visits to the US
• Communications about you from the intelligence agencies
• Commercial data from data brokers and social media

So there you go. Just by this example alone we can state that the US definitely is becoming a Big Brother government, where there is no respect for privacy anymore. Do you plan on going to the US in the near future, or do you live there? You might be thinking about upgrading your digital privacy a bit. See you in the next one.

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