The probable direction of the Trump administration: Rep. Mike Pompeo Wants To Revive Mass Surveillance Program.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article56869248.html.
Related:http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-19/britain-passes-snooper-charter-ending-all-privacy
Maybe it never really stopped? Probably not. Collection probably continued but the collected meta-data was not connected to create information. Potential access to the meta-data on private servers continued. Government programs to data mine it remained on the shelf. Programs that could be applied instantly at any time.
Data about data called meta-data must be targeted on a category to narrow the search and then a unique target or associated targets of inquiry that are granular level individual people. The entire object of surveillance is ultimately a unique individual and set of related individuals about whom all meta-data is connected by relationship.
The ultimate target is always a unique individual. That is where conceptual meta-data about people identifies a real living unique target individual and the attributes of that person. A unique identifier can then be assigned to that individual for whatever purposes are applicable. Purposes ranging from collection of more directly related data specifically applicable to that unique individual. Not data about data (meta-data) that is steps removed from the target tbuy identifies the target but directly connected information about the target.
Targets of meta-data collection (unique individuals) must become identified with a unique reference number. That is the way data and information work.
With enough resources the entire universe of all target unique individuals of the data collection system can be identified initially by a unique number. All citizens are given a number and related public and private information is then associated with that unique citizen number.
Data systems abhor duplication of identification of unique granular identities like nature abhors a vacuum. The system does not function if there is ambiguity about exactly who a person is. There are simply too many John Smiths in the world. There is nothing more specific about an individual than a unique number and unique biometric identifiers.
I contend again that we must all have government master identification numbers. We don't know that number.
At some point in the future the grand structure of our information based society must publicly reveal that secret number already most certainly assigned to every citizen......
or.......
Establish a "new" public number like it was a unique data element of the system that will benefit us all by identifying exactly who we are in our information based environment to end the confusion of so many different way to identify us all associated with a password of our choice or an access code assigned to us. In this case the "secret government number" to which that public number is directly associated and the attributes it records about an individual beyond the unique person's public attributes will remain secret. An individual's public number would be different than the secret number if only hashed to it in order to hide it and its data/information content beyond public individual data/information.
Transparency would demand that we have the ability to know everything an Information Management Entity knows about us, not only what is known but by what means and methods it is known to which rules of Privacy may be applied to judge if it is authorized to be known. "Authorized to be Known" meaning that there are certain things that an individual has sole exclusive civil right to not be known unless it is specifically and contractually authorized by them.
What this all boils down to is that there is a range of data, meta-data and information about us all that identifies who we are and information and knowledge specific to each of us subject to rules of Privacy. The range of that Privacy Domain is shrinking fast as data related to us is collected and aggregated to increasingly detailed levels of granularity to the conceptual front door of our "house" called each of us. Who has the right to enter. To whom do we grant a right or privilege to enter?
In order to protect our Privacy Rights it seems that the difficult answer must be that we all have a unique identifier applicable to each of us that is by our right the means to know, monitor and control data and information about ourselves.
Individually we choose to deal with various organizational entities in the course of our lives. Each of those entities are probably identified by some name or coding required by law. In the same manner that each individual has a unique identification number the organizational entities must also have a unique identifier and Right to its Public and Private data and information. When that information relates to a unique person that person has a right to that information as well as the right to know the source of authorizing that information to be obtained.
Collective entities, business, government, social, etc. increasingly collect and share, probably for a price or some financial or power gain, information about each of us.
Each of us must have to opportunity and ability to know and control data and information that these collective entities maintain and use about us.
The information structure about each individual human being in the world where we relate to unique organizational entities in this Information Age is a simple universal model of Structured Information itself. Structurally designed by an increasingly integrated Top Down Breakdown and Bottom Up Assembly Object Oriented methodology.
It is simple and logical and points to where it is going:
Legacy systems have applied their silo approach to identifying the uniqueness of each of us starting with naming. Perhaps by numbering birth order in a cave. By naming based on work category or location. Bank account. Telephone number, SSN. Bigger, more conceptual and more comprehensive information systems require more precise identification in the direction of exact universal link between a unique conceptual identity and the unique human being to which it relates.
Most unique individual humans can now be identified by starting at the Top Level of all data in the Information System about individuals and then proceeding down through a narrowing scope of duplicate information possibilities ending with final discovery of exactly who that individual is and then giving that individual a system assigned unique number.
A comprehensive universal information system of unique individual identification for any and all purposes is built from the bottom up starting at birth when the technology advances the capability to do this and entities possessing that capability can socially implement it either for their own private entity self interest or public entity governance interest.
Governance interest, our own interest, seems to indicate that we must control the Right to Privacy by establishing a mandatory system of unique biometric identity for every citizen simply to which data and information subject to the Right to Privacy is controlled by each and every citizen. A system that also applies to the obligations of equally uniquely identified organizational entities to observe Citizen Rights to Privacy and protect Organizational Rights to Privacy.
In an increasingly Information Age, the domain of Privacy is increasingly shrinking. Shrinking to a more fundamental core level of being "Left Alone" or "Do Not Contact" on an "Opt Out" model regardless of information known by any entity about any other entity?
A paradox of the right to live in Privacy with Privacy Rights as a unique individual but not to be Anonymous in a Public Information system?
Authoritarian governance control would by its nature violate the right to live in Privacy assured by rights to Privacy by legally sanctioned rights to actions violating not only the Right to Privacy in an Information System for the sake of security but creating a system outside the control of the public consent to govern that would violate Constitutional Rights.
It is a conundrum where we design a system to control ourselves but that system we design controls us!
Transparency of the system to the maximum extent possible short of violation of Rights and its application to all entities in the system, public and private clearly looks like the answer. Transparency enabled by fundamentally knowing who all the players are in the system.
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