December
19, 2002, 2:00 p.m. Big
Brother Is Smelling You
Scratch ‘n’
Sniff Homeland Defense.
By James Plummer
ARPA
is at it again. Sure, the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency laid the groundwork in the 1970's
for the very Internet you're using right now. And more recently, you've
probably heard much about the Information Awareness Office run by Iran-Contra
vet John Poindexter, with their proud seal of a crypto-Masonic pyramid's
all-seeing eye casting a death ray over the entire globe. Or whatever
that's supposed to be. If you're a regular reader of the National Consumer
Coalition's privacy website, you've read about how they want to ID
people by how they walk, and how they're plugged in to the database
that screens at check-in air passengers' credit, travel, criminal
history, et cetera ad infinitum.
And now, if DARPA's
newest mad plan works out, those swarms of unionized federal government
employees at the airport will have a new toy to annoy you with —
robot sensors sniffing you to make sure you're not a smelly terrorist.
Yes, DARPA's Army
Research Office, a cousin of Poindexter's Information Awareness Office
(with a less-scary pyramid in its logo) published on December 13 a "Presolicitation
Notice" of bids for its new "Odortype Detection Program."
According to the full 18-page notice, the ARO hopes to have the technology
fully functional and ready for use some time around 2008. The thinking
behind the plan is that like your genetic code, every person's odor is
unique — in fact, it's determined by your genetic code. If the whiz
kids at DARPA can prove that, they want to move on to develop filters
that will distinguish between the smell of your genes and the smell of
whatever foods or drugs you've been putting in your body. To that end,
"It is envisioned that this will involve experiments using both rodents
and humans." Since the idea behind this program evidently sprang
from observations on how mice react to the "chemosignals" given
off by each others' "urinary odor," such experiments could easily
prove to be an . . . interesting . . . use of your hard-earned tax dollars.
What does all this
mean for privacy? Technology itself is neutral, of course, but there is
often a case to be made against massive expenditures of tax dollars to
develop it. If, a few years from now, "electronic noses" and
"biological sensors" sniff out your genetic code and your breakfast
and subsequently offer you personalized advertisements as you stroll through
the subway a la Minority Report, it won't have been because of
voluntary choices made in the marketplace. It will rather have been due
to the efforts of men in white coats sitting on piles of involuntarily
confiscated tax dollars and rat urine. It's a kind of state-sponsored
distortion of a free society.
And if you ask me,
it stinks.
—
James Plummer is a policy analyst at Consumer Alert, Washington, D.C.,
who originated and publishes www.nccprivacy.org.
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ARPA
is at it again. Sure, the 
