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From: dand@tekigm.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: Artificial Big Brother
Message-ID: <74@tekigm.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 10-Apr-84 16:51:13 EST
Article-I.D.: tekigm.74
Posted: Tue Apr 10 16:51:13 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 13-Apr-84 01:53:47 EST
Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
Lines: 46

<

I cannot agree too strongly with Brint Cooper about this. The tool never makes
the wielder any more or less an "evil" person.

If given a choice, I'd rather have such a tool built by the established AI
community for two reasons:
1) The program's existance is published, so people can think about the
   implications and possibly set up systems to reduce the amount of abuse
   the system is used for. As a possible victim of misuse, I can also start
   thinking about preventive measures to unreasonable privacy invasions(I
   personally believe no one even now has any real privacy if someone is out
   to do you in, but that is not germain here.)
2) If such a tool is in the public domain, at least the people it was
   originally designed for, the law-enforcement agencies, would get some
   use out of it. If this tracking system were to be built in a CIA shop or
   an NSA shop, no one outside those organizations will ever know of its
   existance, and thus never be able to use it.

Abuses with such a system are going to be inevitable; the goal for us to set
is to see that the abuses are kept to a minimum, which we can't do if the
system requires "Top Secret/Burn Before Reading" clearance to even know that it
exists.

Lest anyone try to say that the possible abuses of such a system outweigh the
few benefits of it, remember that Theodore Bundy was convincted with such 
evidence as gasoline receipts in the area where one of his victims disappeared,
at the same time she disappeared. With such a system, perhaps, Ted Bundy would
not have racked up the score of dead, young women that he did. Such a system
might help pinpoint the current Green River Killer in Washington State,
or reduce the predations of the itinerant killers who prey on anyone they
think they can get away with. If some shadowy bureaucrat were out to get you,
this system would not be necessary--a judge's signature is all that is needed
to open up the records of your Visa, your bank, your employer, etc (granted it
may not be a legal action on that part of that judge, but we're already talking
about illegal activities, no?).

Finally, if this discussion is going to go on, let's move it to net.politics
or net.misc or net.legal, net.ai is not the proper forum for this discussion.

Dan C Duval
ISI Engineering
Tektronix,Inc

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