Identity: "Google" Sousveillance vs. REAL ID

According to C|Net News.com, a recent study indicates that 1 in 4 'HR People' have rejected a candidate for the positions they were looking to fill, due to the results of a Google Search.

The study was conducted by a company called Viadeo. This is a trend that, apparently, has been developing for a few years now, and is of course growing stronger. This of course means that your days of claiming that you spent a year reforesting the tropical jungles of Saudi Arabia are, basically, over.It also apparently matches the rough percentage of individuals whom are "'avid' tech users" in general. This technique has its flaws, of course (from lifehacker.com):

A recent poll here on Lifehacker shows that for about half of you, information about someone else with the same name or a web site you don't control gets returned in search results for your name.

That certainly does count as a "doozie" of a flaw in the technique. One can make a general assumption, though, that as technology becomes more and more ubiquitous in our lives, then it will also be more and more possible to refine searches to be somewhat more 'specific.' All of this of course basically means that whether we like it or not, there will be a (nearly) universal, comprehensive identification system replete with individual histories; we are already contributing to its existence, right now. This adds to the development of what is coming to be called sousveillance:

(IPA: [suːˈveɪləns], French [suvɛjɑ̃s]) [...] the recording of an activity from the perspective of a participant in the activity (i.e. personal experience capture).

Whether or not this is necessarily a good thing, is certainly up to debate. But it definitely allows for something of which there is far too little of these days; "Sunlight", or "transparency", in government actions on all levels. One sterling example of the dangers, however, of employing such technology against government agents can be found in online archive of The Daily Tribune of Bartow County, Georgia.

Lee and Teresa Sipple spent $1,200 mounting three video cameras and a radar speed unit outside their home, which is at the bottom of a hill. They have said they did so in hopes of convincing neighbors to slow down to create a safe environment for their son.

The Sipples allegedly caught Kennesaw police officer Richard Perrone speeding up to 17 mph over the speed limit. Perrone alerted Bartow authorities, who in turn visited the Sipples' home to tell them Perrone intended to press charges against them for stalking.

This happened some time ago, and Officer Perrone has dropped all charges -- but this demonstrates a very real trend; the same observation techniques used by government agents (police in this case), speeding cameras, when turned around by private individuals to observe government agents, resulted in "legal action" being taken against them. One can only wonder what would have happened if no one had reported this incident (or if it hadn't received 3000 "diggs" on Digg.com, as of 5/30/2007).

To turn this story in another direction, however, one has only to look at the "controversy" over the REAL ID act, which is supposed to be a tool to combat illegal immigration, and terrorism. From the section, "Documentation required before issuing a license or ID card":

Before a card can be issued, the applicant must provide the following documentation^[7]:

• A photo ID, or a non-photo ID that includes full legal name and birthdate.
• Documentation of birthdate.
• Documentation of legal status and Social Security number
• Documentation showing name and principal residence address.

Digital images of each identity document will be stored in each state DMV database.

Consider the following: It is possible that a "google search" of the hijackers of the planes of "9/11" could have found suspiciousness about them. But could the above information do so? Were, for example, the hijackers themselves illegal immigrants? (They were not.) Does having this information all collated into one place make people any safer, more secure, or make illegal immigration any harder? The answer there is not necessarily obvious, but rather than taking the word of this author, try looking to the Burton Group, an identity security specialist, for exactly that:

I’d make explicit the conclusion which the Data Privacy and Integrity Committee left readers to infer from their report:

The REAL ID act is a bad idea. The problems with the REAL ID act listed in the Committee’s report should not be fixed, because fixing them will not address the core issues the REAL ID act raises. Fixing the problems the Committee has identified will simply produce the best possible version of a very bad system. If the REAL ID act is implemented, there is no chance it will meet its stated goals; there is every reason to believe it will have many unforeseen adverse consquences; and there is every reason to believe its costs will be huge in proportion to its benefits.

There's plenty more where that came from on that article, but that is a decent summarization. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, has been working on "rallying the troops" against the act. (See this article by means of example) -- and it would seem it is, in fact, working. A recent opinion article also mentioned by Cato's blog, found at the Baltimoresun, shows exactly that.

This shows just another sterling example of how a "free market" or "open source" approach is superior to the approach of a centralized bureaucracy, however; just like "the Wikipedia" -- at the very least, the "name search" approach is more likely to catch troublesome elements of one's history, that the universal REAL ID database won't. And as is so often the case, when a database is non-centralized, it is virtually impossible to create systematic bypasses into the process; they get exposed for what they are far too quickly -- and that doesn't even begin to touch on the RFID chips that were at some point proposed to be embedded into every REAL ID-qualifying identification card, which would broadcast your personal identification information to anyone with a radio receiver. Imagine the identity theft possible there!

EDIT: Yet another sterling example for, your consumption, of how sousveillance saved the day when dealing with a government representative. H/T to SSaoR.

See more on this vein, from this blog, here:
-- Information Suffrage: Why The Lou Dobbses, Bill o'Reillys, Keith Olbermanns, and Glenn Becks of the World are the Enemies of Freedom
-- US Government To Use East German Spy Tech on American Citizens?
-- Open Source with a Bullet: John Robb’s Brave New War
-- This Just In: Hackers NOT "Too Smart" for Libertarianism!
-- Ethics of Cyberization