Loose Cannon: Little Boys Trying on Men’s Clothing
How ironic that right on the heels of the National Center for Database Marketing conference came two reports on data-based government programs. Both of these news items put me in mind of Ronald Reagan’s quote, “There are no good minds in government. If there were, business would hire them away.”
The first item concerned Capps 2, the second iteration of the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening initiative. Last week, the government announced that it was abandoning a plan that would use commercial databases to determine which passengers presented a security risk. Instead, it will be relying on government databases.
The Terrorist Screening Center, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, is charged with incorporating names from an existing no-fly list, as well as records from the State Department, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency. According to the New York Times, once this massive merge/purge operation is complete, it will trim the 14% of passengers currently targeted for screening to 4%. (Has anyone bothered to check whether these often-antiquated systems are, in fact, compatible?)
If my math holds, that’s a 71% reduction in stop-and-searches – without any loss of targeting efficiency. Damned if I know where the government is planning on finding the analysts to write those programs, but boy, could the DM industry use some of that talent.
The government’s second adventure in database screening focuses on Florida’s efforts to remove felons from its voter registration lists. Under recent systems, Hispanics were much less likely to be removed from the ranks than black voters. Leave aside any political speculation for why this was: Florida’s secretary of state Glenda Hood (who took over from Katherine Harris) blamed it on a methodological flaw.
Hmm, wonder if the same talent pool the government plans to draw from is the one that programmed into this system.
When I consider what these government programs propose to do in light of what direct marketers are capable of, I want three things. First, I want to know that the best possible algorithms have gone into making sure any plane I’m on doesn’t take any unscheduled turns toward national monuments or significant buildings. Second, when I go to the polls I want to be sure that I won’t be confused with the Richard Levey who is the marine biologist in Vermont, the COO of the city of Orlando or the New York-based computer programmer/hacker. Third, I want to know that I’m going to get nifty catalogs in the mail that are tailored to my desires.
I’m pretty sure I’m going to get one of these. And the two that I’m a lot less confident about getting have me terrified.
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