Database Mining

Captain's Quarters notes that Congressional investigators have noticed what I did in this article, and takes the wrong tack:

we should instead move to limit its application. For instance, the need for the Internal Revenue Service to conduct data-mining operations eludes me. The IRS already has its hands on almost every single movement of cash through the requirement of federal tax IDs and Social Security numbers for financial transactions to take place.

This is only the official stuff - and has nothing to do with under the table transactions. As a working loan officer I've acquired a good feel as to part of the size of the underground economy, and it is enormous. Personally, I've had two offers within the past month to do work for a discount if I paid in cash. I have a firm policy of refusing such offers as in my profession, the regulators finding an off the books transaction is reason to terminate my license if they want it to be. But these are underground transactions, and they cost you, me and everyone else a lot of money in taxes, in benefits that the people performing said work really don't qualify for, and other things.



The IRS is supposed to look for stuff like this. This is how they sent many of the old time gangsters to jail when the FBI and police failed.



Nor is the government supposed to be blind in gathering evidence. What they are supposed to do is have a "reasonable person's" idea that there is a problem before they perform a search. A search is basically looking for non-public data. If you are doing drugs or performing a mugging on a public street and a police officer drives by, he doesn't have to get a warrant to act. He can see it with his own eyes. What the fourth amendment is intended to prohibit is "fishing", using the law to terrorize citizens, going in to some opponent's affairs just on the chance that there is a violation. All of what they are looking for is in public databases.



Captain Ed does continue

Congress should make clear the uses and parameters of data mining to head off major abuses of the data, and it should limit the use of this technique to critical national-security functions. Do not let the privacy-at-all-costs make us fight the war without the effective tools necessary to find our enemies before they find us.

So he gets it fifty percent right. But consider: If everyone's financial data is public, who is going to be the most scrutinized? If you answered public officials, you win the prize! I can think of no better method of insuring corruption is kept to a minimum. Everybody who wants a public life will know they've got to be squeeky clean, and have no complaint coming if something comes up. I can think of no better way of insuring that trustees and directors of charities and corporations are clean, and performing their duties. And if everyone's financial stuff is public, identity thieves might as well dance naked in the street, because they're not getting away with it. Security can be provided by biometrics, by public and private encryption keys, and any number of other methods. Most of the problem and vulnerability with social security numbers and similar schemes can be traced to the fact that they are a single data item trying to fulfill functions of both identifier and password gatekeeper.



If you offer most people a choice between privacy and tranparency, they will choose privacy for themselves and transparency for everyone else. I admit that I'd like to be anonymous while I can hold everyone else accountable, but somehow I suspect that you, the readers, wouldn't like that very much. Given the state of the law, the powerful and the rich can mine your information if they want to, and likely avoid any penalties even if they are caught. On the other hand, they have all the levers they could want to protect their own information in the reverse situation. I hope I am not alone in finding that intolerable. Going further in the direction of privacy is fruitless. Only in transparency is there relief. I admit the idea makes me a little nervous, but bottom line, I've got nothing worth hiding. Especially not when everyone's coming out into the open. Any little warts on basically honest individuals will be overshadowed and ignored. It's only the crooks who have cause to worry.



The databases are there, bottom line they are available to the public, and the bad guys (identity thieves and others) are mining them. There is no turning back. The genie will not go back into the bottle. We can pretend he's still there to our detriment, or decide to stop pretending and step out into transparency.