Big Brother Is Watching YouTube

Isn’t it good to know that your government is keeping tabs on you by means of something called an Automated Targeting System, or ATS?

ATS is one big funky profiling system that profiles you as a terrorist based on a whole range of information about you gleaned from your flights in and out of the country. Let’s say you never get the pork for the in-flight meal. If you are always coming in from Tel Aviv, that might get you a low score. But if you are always flying in from Shiraz, Iran, that might dramatically raise your score. But if you are always also drinking the Shiraz, that might lower your score once more. And so on.

Fare Thee Well, in all your travels, and good luck on getting a low terrorist score! Remember it’s not personal – you’re being targeted by a heartless, mindless, soulless, automated data cranking system. What can go wrong?

But why should the government stop at collecting data about you from your flights in and out of the country? Well, I could tell you why, but it doesn’t matter – they WON’T stop! So let’s see what that will look like.

Fortunately my mathematics skills are still keen enough that I know exactly what it will look like. It will look like Netflix. Netflix’s founder Reed Hastings, who, like me and my homie Florence Nightingale, is/was also a mathematician, was just the other day telling Lesley Stahl how Netflix automatically knows how to recommend movies to you based on what you have already rented. I forget the exact words he used, but it boils down to this: the more you know about everybody, the more you know about anybody. The system simply learns what you will like from what the other clients currently like who have recently liked what you like now.

How will that work in practice? The government probably won’t mine Netflix’s data because it isn’t democratic enough. A potential domestic terrorist might not be willing to spend $5.99/month on DVDs when he could be using that money to stock up on fertilizer. Instead, our government will track things we get for free. Like YouTube videos.

Don’t kid yourself. All potential terrorists, even poor domestic terrorists nonfunded by foreign governments, enjoy YouTube. Because of that it will be very easy for Homeland Security to find terrorists by assembling a YouTube preferences terrorist score. In fact, it would be so easy they’re probably already doing it.

Think about it. If you think your personal iPod music list tells everybody everything they need to know about you, how much more will your YouTube video favorites do the trick? Just wait until Homeland Security’s computers get wind of your passion for 1930’s Soviet propaganda films featuring the Russian Internationale, with subtitles, or for 23-second clips of buskers in Budapest, annotated in Polish by someone who evidently speaks Polish but nevertheless chooses to call attention to her knowledge of English by calling herself tongue_lust.

What do you think it will mean to Homeland Security when their computer bank finds out you can’t resist scratchy videos of Uyghur lute players performing against backgrounds of Xinjiang Province landscapes? What it means depends on what all the other freaks out there with the exact same tastes do with their lives, and how often they get suspected of being a terrorist. If they (people you don’t know) are suspected of being terrorists, you will be too.

Here’s a stupid joke I just made up. How many Russians does it take to poison a light bulb? Answer: You are asking too many questions. Finish your soup!

Depending on whether you think my stupid joke is funny, the Bush administration can rate you on how trustworthy you are. It’s easy. I think my joke is a hoot, and the government knows I can’t be trusted. So if you like my joke, you can’t be trusted either.

Be beyond suspicion. Don’t do anything I would do.