The second annual Smithsonian-ComputerWorld Award for innovative information technology in the governmental sector went last year to the Thailand Ministry of Interior for its citizen database system, the largest in the world. It tracks and cross-references data on 55 million citizens. Thais are assigned a "Population Identification Number" and are required to carry a computer readable ID card that includes photo, thumbprint, and personal data.

The system will include ancestral history and family makeup. Among other things, it is designed to track voting patterns, domestic and foreign travel, and social welfare. Twelve thousand government agents will have networked access. The director of the Central Population Database Center was quoted as saying, "The people feel this system will protect them."

Our government-funded Smithsonian and our largest dinosaur- computer trade rag judged it to be the best government system in the world. Two of the three judges have major computer responsiblities in the US government. (Based on an article in "The Privacy Journal," Box 28577, Providence, RI 02908, $35/year.)

Privacy International founder Simon Davies commented on the Smithsonian-ComputerWorld award at the Computers, Freedom & Privacy Conference (CFP) last March. He said that, when he tried to encourage privacy protection in Thai and other Far East nations, they repeatedly referenced the Smithsonian-ComputerWorld award as evidence that the United States thought their system was outstanding.

He said the FBI plans to include a convenience for patrol officers around the nation to use when they stop someone on the street. The officer, "at the patrol-car level, will be able to take a video image of the person for identification, as well as a fingerprint...and move that through the network...and do a match at the central repository of fingerprints and photographs." He added, "it's to your advantage to do this" (so you can drive on more quickly if the computer doesn't find anything on you--and makes no mistakes).

When asked what else the computer might do with the digitized image, he said, "It just goes away." When asked about local officers or agencies retaining the digitized images in a local database, he said, "It's supposed to get lost."

When asked if somebody could "enter the system by the radio frequency," he said, "but that's data transmission. What are they going to pick up? They're not going to get...audio. I don't know anybody that can demodulate the data off those police frequencies."

A chorus from the audience responded: "We do!"

(Tapes of the CFP sessions are available from Recording, Etc., 415-327-9344 in Palo Alto, 800-227-9980 outside California. Printed proceedings and videotapes are planned. If interested, drop me a note...

Jim Warren, Realizable Fantasies, 345 Swett Road, Woodside, CA 94062, Published proposals [in MicroTimes, Southern California's computer magazine] will be attributed to their authors unless anonymity is requested.

MicroTimes, Southern California's Computer Magazine, July 22, 1991, 85, Page 22

Jim Warren organized and Chaired the First Conference on Computers, Freedom & Privacy, sponsored by a dozen organizations. He founded InfoWorld, the DataCast proposal for paperless electronic newspaper, Wireless Digital, Intitiative, Inc. and one of the nation's largest microcomputer conventions. He was founding host of PBS's "Computer Chronicles," founding editor of Dr. Dobb's Journal, and has chaired various computer professionals' organizations. He holds graduate degrees in computing (Stanford), medical information science (UC Medical Center), and mathematics.

"Say they bust threee brothers...and place them in the cell with me. We're there for three days so we get to rapping, then one day I reach in my shoe and pull out three joints and we smoke 'em. We start rapping some more and I say, "Do you know that dirty such and such? That dirty bastard is a pig, man. I know he's a pig because he busted me." "Oh, Yeah!" they say. Then I tell them all I know about the cat. . . . That starts it. Now you got three brothers believing it because their 'information' came from a righteous brother in the jail they were smoking weed with and he told them this guy was the one who indentified him to the police. Now, you see, you have planted the seeds of distrust. Then you start planting a little more. You start busting people all around him. You know they are going to kill him so you just sit and watch. When it happens, you just pick up the two or three men who killed him....You get rid of four brothers at one time plus a public outcry is raised, 'Get those crazy people off the streets.'" Page 53, SuperSpies The Secret Side of Government,, Jules Archer, ISBN 0-440-08136-X, Copyright 1977

California police officers were given a course called California Civil Disorder Mangement Course (CCDMC) at an army camp in San Luis Obispo. CCDMC instructors taught them that peaceful dissent was "step one" in the development of revolution, and that participants should be photographed, with their activities kept track of in dossiers. Page 128, SuperSpies The Secret Side of Government,, Jules Archer, ISBN 0-440-08136-X, Copyright 1977