National Security in a Post-9/11 World: The Rise of Surveillance, … the Demise of Privacy?

1. National Security in a Post-9/11 World: The Rise of Surveillance, … the Demise of Privacy? Ann Cavoukian, Ph.D. Information & Privacy Commissioner/Ontario 2004 Osler Hoskin & Harcourt Lecture Centre for Innovation Law and Policy February 23, 2004

2. Whither Privacy? • Post September 11th • Enormous impact on privacy • The Security of Freedom: Essays on Canada's Anti-Terrorism Bill • University of Toronto, 2001 www.utppublishing.com/detail.asp?TitleID=2493

3. September 11, 2001 “Public safety is paramount but balanced against privacy” • Security measures must be real, not illusory • New powers must be studied and measured to determine effectiveness and utility • Are new security powers truly necessary or are existing powers not fully utilized or effectively deployed? http://www.ipc.on.ca/userfiles/page_attachments/1517136_pub01-e.pdf http://www.cbc.ca/news/indepth/usattacked/essay_privacy.html

4. Anti-terrorism Laws • Canada • Anti-terrorism Act • Customs Act – Canada Customs & Revenue Agency expanded powers • Bill C-17 Public Safety Act (first reading) • United States • USA PATRIOT Act • Transportation Security Administration: CAPPS II • United Kingdom • Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act

5. Why be Concerned? • Expanded scope of domestic surveillance • Lack of justification • Weakening of judicial controls • Lack of independent oversight

6. Are These Laws Effective? • Reasons why these laws will not work: • Depend on questionable technology • Too much irrelevant information collected • Create a tempting target • Solving the wrong problem

7. Importance of Privacy to Liberty • Privacy is a vital social value. “Privacy is at the heart of liberty in the modern state. Grounded in [one's] physical and moral autonomy, privacy is essential for the well-being of the individual. … [I]t also has a profound significance for the public order.” Dr. Alan Westin

8. Information Privacy Defined • Information Privacy: Data Protection • Freedom of choice; personal control; informational self-determination • Personal control over the collection, use and disclosure of any recorded information about an identifiable individual

9. Fair Information Practices:A Brief History • OECD Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data • E.U. Directive on Data Protection • CSA Model Code for the Protection of Personal Information • Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA)

10. The Foundation: Fair Information Practices • Accountability • Identifying Purposes • Consent • Limiting Collection • Limiting Use, Disclosure, Retention • Accuracy • Safeguards • Openness • Individual Access • Challenging Compliance CSAModel Code for the Protection of Personal Information

11. Submission to the Standing Committee • Submission to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration re: privacy implications of a National Identity Card and Biometric Technology – November 4, 2003 • Interim Committee report questioned the value of introducing a national ID card

12. National ID Card Issues • No business case justifying ID Cards • Enormous cost of design and roll-out • Security vulnerabilities: high demand for access to associated databases – increased threat

13. National ID Card • Only one plausible rationale: U.S. requirement for biometric identifiers at border crossings by end of 2004 • Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002 • Canada currently exempted

14. Biometrics • Definition: The automated use of physiological or behavioral characteristics to determine or verify identity • Far from foolproof: myths abound (don’t believe the movies)

15. Biometric Applications Identification: • one-to-many comparison Authentication: • one-to-one comparison

16. The Myth of Accuracy • The problem with large databases containing thousands (or millions) of biometric templates: • False positives • False negatives

17. Biometric Identification False Positive Challenge • Even with a 99.99% accuracy rate, everyone will have at least one false positive match • “The false alarm rate would overwhelm the system...” Bruce Schneier, Beyond Fear, p.253

18. The Fallacy of the Accuracy Re: Biometric Identification If you have a 1 in 10,000 error rate per fingerprint (99.99% accuracy rate), then a person being scanned against a million-record data set will be flagged as positive 100 times. And that’s every person. A system like that would be useless because everyone would be a false positive. Bruce Schneier, quoted in Ann Cavoukian’s Submission to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, November 4, 2003 http://www.ipc.on.ca/docs/110403ac-e.pdf

19. Biometric Identification • False Negative Challenge: • Attackers could fool the system • Pay-offs high for compromising the system • Increased vulnerability to a target once a terrorist succeeds in obtaining a false negative: threat escalates considerably

20. Biometric Strength: Authentication The strength of one-to-one matches • Authentication/verification does not require the central storage of templates • Biometrics can be stored locally, not centrally – on a smart card, bar code, passport etc.

21. Designing Privacy Into Biometrics • The Privacy Challenges: • Central template databases • Unacceptable error rates • Secondary uses

22. Final Thoughts on Biometrics • Current off-the-shelf biometrics will permit the secondary uses of personal information • The Goal: “Technology that allows for informational self-determination and makes good security a by-product of protecting one’s privacy” – George Tomko • Using the biometric to encrypt a PIN or a standard encryption key will meet that goal: Biometric Encryption

23. “I am not a number, I am a free man” “I am not a number, I am a human being. I will not be filed, stamped, indexed or numbered. My life is my own.” The Prisoner TV series, 1968

24. How to Contact Us Ann Cavoukian, Ph.D. Information & Privacy Commissioner/Ontario 80 Bloor Street West, Suite 1700 Toronto, Ontario M5S 2V1 Phone:(416) 326-3333 Web: www.ipc.on.ca E-mail:commissioner@ipc.on.ca