Term Paper on "Automated Banking in Our Future"

Term Paper 15 pages (3877 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Automated Banking in Our Future

Privacy's advent in the technological era

Information technology (it) has changed and modified life throughout the world. In fact, it has redefined "the world." Neighbors now reside thousands of miles apart. Strangers live next door.

Almost every aspect of our lives is affected daily by tremendous increases in computer processing, inter-connectivity, data mining, and the resulting availability and exploitability of information on each of us as often unknowing and unsuspecting civilians.

Automated or managed monitoring and recording of every private daily transaction has already skyrocketed well beyond what most people understand and this trend will continue to increase, and personal privacy as we have understood it in the past will be challenged and even forgotten in many circumstances.

Relying on his vast knowledge of trends, Potomac Institute symposiast David Brin remarked summarily, but deliberatively: "Get over it." (Brin, 2001) According to McBride's research, "From the perspective of technological innovation, the inevitability of Brin's suggestion might be inescapable. Digital face recognition technology, for example, is remarkably capable in large crowds and at appreciable range. Authorities are already deploying this maturing brand of it even as organized and other elements of American citizenry question the use of significantly less sophisticated tools -- automobile license plate identification as an example, to associate people with automobiles with places -- for multiple uses in law enforcement." (McBride, 2003)

That is why there is ample rationale to anticipate that this portends even worse in the future. Accoridng to McBride and Brin, signals as personal as body odor may soon be exploited for detecting, identifying, or tracking suspicious individuals in high-risk environments. It is probably forevermore beyond "just conceivable" that organizations will face fewer and less expensive technical barriers to analyzing an individual's whereabouts and actions of today, in 2003, as they may be "recalled to life," as Dickens wrote in "A Tale of Two Cities," decades and centuries in the future.

The business community always uses advanced it in search of entirely legitimate purposes. Internet-delivered product "suggestions" may appear to be simply botherances to some, or time-savers to others, but the inferencing technology that underlies this marketing technique is as straightforward as it is effective.

Software builds models of people based on seemingly private (shopping) behavior. Algorithms are implemented worldwide by the banking and credit card industry with an end to decreasing fraud and protecting customers, here once more by "profiling." As McBride writes, "Benign and blind as the technology trends may seem in clear circumstances, applications in contexts that are not understood by those who are not voluntarily party to the scheme can appear threatening to personal freedoms. For example, in order to minimize retail loss (shoplifting), one international razor blade manufacturer has pursued the idea of embedding radio-frequency identification devices (RFIDs) in its product packaging." (Fitzgerald, 2003 and McBride, 2003)

Even though in today's the effective range for detecting and reading RFIDs is a matter of inches, concerns of privacy are predictable, rational, and they are already growingly organized through privacy groups.

Concerns of privacy protection from corporate meddling are not philosophically different from concerns about intrusions from fellow citizens. Having received an unwanted voice mail prank at the Potomac Institute, McBride notes that an irritated junior researcher -- in a matter of minutes and clicks -- produced a "file" on the perpetrator, including his home address, age, school and class photo, and the names of his parents, their employment and civic membership, all packaged with the prankster's voice message, ready made for electronic or U.S. Postal Service shipping to the person's parents. (McBride, 2003)

Moreover, as McBride points out, "Defiantly, a senior staff member declared that he was entirely immune from similar search. In short order, a "dossier" was produced with most of the above categories of information, including a downloaded overhead image of the staffer's suburban home, and of course minimum-effort driving directions complete with the residential telephone number, otherwise bought and paid for as "unlisted." (McBride, 2003)

McBride notes that in the experiment, the file production was stopped before mortgage and other information was appended. All of the above tasks and intrusions were accomplished with routinely accessible data-mining software obtained over the Internet. This is not black market software -- it is largely free and entirely available from top-drawer companies.

The societal ramifications of the examples noted may pale in comparison to the consequences of gathering data as vitally personal as DNA (the government already owns genetic data on military personnel) or other biomedical data for the examination of insurance availability, job qualification, or myriad other largely unregulated purposes. Regulation in any facet, indeed, implies oversight by the government; in the present case, this means protection by the government against possible and therefore permanent government intrusion. (McBride, 2003)

Within the course of privacy regulation, what is the most fundamental of landmarks in our constitutional history was the post-Watergate passing of the Privacy Act of 1974.

This act was constructed to rectify widely acknowledged shortcomings in privacy protection, one arguable consequence was that the act is in practice, weak and difficult to enforce. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in fact, maintains that on balance, there may be more ill-advised intrusion than ever intended by this statute. The ACLU is unexcelled in its analysis and passionate pursuit of privacy matters; however today, many more groups such as the Privacy Institute have emerged as even more left-wing protectors of privacy issues, especially on the banking level.

Indeed, ACLU documentation of minimally impeded intrusion into "personal" records (including social security, school records, electronic communication -- as well as criminal histories) demonstrates lear public concern for privacy protection -- more so now than ever as information technology tentacles increasingly reach and penetrate our sensitivities.

As McBride writes, "But intrusion cannot be examined on its face value alone. As Amitai Etzioni has written compellingly, the realities of ambitious life will always require balance (perhaps to also mean efficacy and safety). The risks of inappropriate meddling must be squared with the risks of inappropriate neglect. Are parents justified in discovering from government fries or officers that the house they are about to purchase and move into -- with their 10-year-old daughter -- sits next door to the home of a multiple episode sex offender? An emotionally informed answer might certainly be "yes" but what if there is an error? Suppose the neighbor is not a rapist; he is clinically depressed, suicidal and fatally sensitive to being ostracized. As Etzioni outlines with clarity, a reformulated concept of "common good" must be derived and made central to balancing privacy and security: This is particularly defensible in the era of expansive, high access it." (McBride, 2003 and Etzioni, 1999)

Transactional data will serve an increasingly important role in national and local security efforts for identifying and slowing and mitigating criminal behavior. Public acceptance of this enterprise is positive and probably growing since the late summer of 2001, and then of course after the advent of the new age of terrorism after the events of September 11 of that year.

Prosecutorial pursuit of criminals occurs, however, groundedthe presumption of universal innocence. The correctexploitation of all transactions thus requires security and privacy policies to protect the rights of Americans, suspects or otherwise, consistent with the letter, and spirit of law. The "law" is a lot more than just the Fourth Amendment, and its spirit as a whole is much greater than the sum of its case law parts. Although beyond the scope of this document, it is entirely feasible to guess that most Americans don't know much about privacy theory or privacy law, but as the Supreme Court justices argued about pornography, they seem to know what they want - and they are adamant about protecting that.

According to McBride's research, "Whereas U.S. citizens seem willing to sacrifice some degree of privacy for some payoff in security, there may be few universally agreeable solutions in practice. As one example, reports of fairly streamlined examination of passengers at airport security screens suggests that reluctance to disclose contents of bags, shoes, and garments is offset by the desires for safe flight." (McBride, 2003)

In recent months and years, however, researchers discovered that passengers were significantly less willing to be weighed (because of privacy matters) for the purposes of aircraft loading -- a management process that is vitally important to safe flight, particularly for small aircraft.

As a result, privacy is more valued in issues of the person; but it is sacrificed for protection from terrorism, but not other causes of ills and harms. This, despite the fact that center of gravity loading errors are statistically a far greater danger than the untoward prospects of in-flight terrorism.

The confrontation of arriving at a balance between privacy and security is not a new challenge indeed. Our democracy has met, solved, or held in compromise this challenge many times, through many technological eras and through many legal regimes over the decades and centuries.

Occasionally, technological discoveries and changes have resulted in maturational… READ MORE

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