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Date Posted: 15:35:22 12/03/01 Mon
NYTimes
November 12, 2001
Online Privacy Expert Shifts Focus to Security
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/technology/12RICH.html?todaysheadlines
By LAURIE J. FLYNN
As perhaps the nation's most vocal authority on data privacy, Richard M. Smith spent the last two years trying to keep Americans' personal information private from corporate intrusions. But seeing bigger threats, he is now turning his attention to studying whether the public is sufficiently secure.
Mr. Smith resigned earlier this month as the chief technology officer for the nonprofit Privacy Foundation in Denver. In light of the terrorist attacks on the United States, Mr. Smith said he was compelled to focus on technology related to "homeland security" issues, like facial scanning and electronic ID cards.
"Privacy is an important thing, but now people are concerned about their safety and about security, so those have moved up in priority," he said. "I guess I'm being a bit opportunistic," he added.
In his first big case in his new role, he worked with the American Civil Liberties Union to test facial scanning technology that many of the nation's airports are now considering deploying.
Along with the A.C.L.U., Mr. Smith presented findings last week at Logan Airport in Boston, showing that the devices were largely ineffective in identifying terrorists - though they might be helpful in making identifications from a smaller pool of local criminals as they try to flee by boarding planes.
He said he expected future customers would be similar private organizations as well as government agencies.
A former software entrepreneur, Mr. Smith is credited with uncovering dozens of incidents in which high technology companies were trying to breech consumers' privacy by secretly tracking online movements.
Last year, for example, he brought attention to the growth in the use of "Web bugs," tiny software programs that allow Web companies to conduct online surveillance of their customers.
Before joining the Privacy Foundation 14 months ago, he spent 13 years running Phar Lap Software, a software development tools company in Boston.
Mr. Smith, who is based in Boston, is advertising his new consulting company on his Web site, ComputerBytesMan.com, where he will publish his research. "I've always been interested in computer-bites-man stories," he said.
=====================================================
"Not all truths need to be told. Some shouldn't. But those that should are
those which cause the innocent to suffer, and create a divide between people
because of lies .... even lies of silence."
--- From "People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil"
by M. Scott Peck, M.D.
=====================================================
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