blocked by Congress, would have required many officials to sign lifetime secrecy agreements. "I feel very strongly that there has been a tremendous move towards greater official secrecy in many areas," she says. Mrs. Bok says the US already has far too much secrets. She cites studies saying that many things labeled "top secret" are innocuous. The light in the library is fading. Yes, Mrs. Bok concludes, there are technologies whose intrusive potential bears watching. Yet much information is still our own. "Sometimes people, I think, assume in this country that there is little that is private anymore, little that is secret," she says. "There I just think they are wrong, actually." [From the Washington Post, Apr. 25, 1984] GOVERNMENT TO SHARE DEADBEAT LIST WITH PRIVATE CREDIT-RATING BUREAUS (By Pete Earley) The Office of Management and Budget is putting the finishing touches on a debt collection system that will let federal agencies, for the first time, turn over to private credit bureaus the names of individuals and companies that owe the government money. OMB officials aren't sure how many Americans have unpaid debts to federal agencies, but they believe that many of the deadbeats will be eager to pay once they learn that their credit rating could be affected. At stake is an estimated $18 billion in outstanding debts, 80 percent of it in unpaid loans owed to the Small Business Administration and the Departments of Agriculture, Education and Housing and Urban Development. Individuals who received overpayments from various federal entitlement and assistance programs owe an additional $3 billion. The OMB project also will give about 100 federal agencies direct computer access to credit bureau records, where financial information about more than 100 million individuals and companies is stored. According to Joseph R. Wright, deputy OMB director, agencies will use the information to identify individuals and companies that have poor credit histories and to track persons who borrow from more than one agency. In the past, some borrowers have obtained new federal loans at the same time they were in default on a loan granted by a different agency. Although the government has had access to credit records for several years, the new system will let agencies tap the records almost instantly, 24 hours a day, the OMB said. The credit program is the culmination of three years of effort by the Reagan administration, which first had to persuade Congress to amend federal privacy laws to let the government and the private sector share financial information. OMB expects the General Services Administration to finish negotiating contracts with seven national credit-reporting firms within a few months so that the information exchange can begin in October. Five of the credit firms collect computerized information about individuals. The other two collect credit data about companies. When Wright first mentioned the project several months ago at a news briefing, he described it as a major example of how the administration will improve the government's debt collection process by using techniques that have been used successfully by private industry for years. But OMB officials recently have been reluctant to discuss the project, saying any publicity would be premature. "This is just not something that we want to talk about right now," an OMB spokesman explained last week. This low-key approach is an abrupt shift for OMB, which has used such gimmicks as a five-foot-long check and trash bags filled with hundreds of federal reports to dramatize its campaign against federal fraud, waste and abuse. Sources in the agency said the shift occurred, in part, because some administration officials are worried that the project might be "misunderstood" and many Americans "might become unduly worried" at the idea of federal agencies gaining access to large amounts of sensitive financial data. Most credit bureau records include information about a person's income and the current status of bank loans, liens and credit card accounts. Some also include information about divorce records. Marvin B. Kaplan, a spokesman for the Associated Credit Bureaus Inc., a trade association, said the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1968 prevents such information from being misused. That law would prohibit the government from reviewing an individual's credit record unless that person was under consideration for a federal loan, contract or job, Kaplan said. Law enforcement agencies can examine credit records for other reasons, but they must obtain a court warrant to review anything from the files other than names, addresses, former addresses and places of employment, Kaplan said. In addition, anyone denied credit because of a credit bureau report also has a right to review the record and challenge it, Kaplan said. REPORTS AND ARTICLES COMPUTER MATCHING IS A SERIOUS THREAT TO INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS JOHN SHATTUCK More and more frequently, government agencies have been employing a new investigative technique: the matching of unrelated computerized files of individuals to identify suspected law violators. This techniquecomputer matching-provides a revolutionary method of conducting investigations of fraud, abuse, and waste of government funds. It permits the government to screen the records of whole categories of people, such as federal employees, to determine who among them also falls into separate, supposedly incompatible categories, such as welfare recipients. Computer matching raises profound issues concerning individual privacy, due process of law, and the presumption of innocence. It also poses serious questions about cost effectiveness and the internal management of government programs. COMPUTER MATCHING VERSUS To understand the impact of computer matching on individual rights, it is first necessary to grasp the difference between a computer-matching investigation and a traditional law enforcement investigation. A traditional investigation is triggered by some evidence that a person is engaged in wrongdoing. This is true for cases of tax evasion, welfare fraud, bank robbery, or traffic speeding. The limited resources of law enforcement usually make it impracticable to conduct dragnet investigations. More importantly, our constitutional system bars the government from investigating ©1994 ACM 0001-0782/84/0800-05.38 754 persons it does not suspect of wrongdoing A computer match is not bound by these limitations. It is directed not at an individual, but at an entire category of persons. A computer match is initiated not because any person is suspected of misconduct, but because his or her category is of interest to the government. What makes computer matching fundamentally different from a traditional investigation is that its very purpose is to generate the evidence of wrongdoing required before an investigation can begin. That evidence is produced by "matching" two sets of personal records compiled for unrelated purposes. There are four ways in which a computer match differs from a conventional law enforcement investigation in its impact on individual rights: (1) Fourth Amendment The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, the most blatant of which have been "fishing expeditions" directed against large numbers of people. From the "writs of assistance" used in the eighteenth century by royal revenue agents, to door-to-door searches for violations of the British tariff laws in the American Colonies, to the municipal code inspections of the twentieth century to enforce health and safety standards, the principle that generalized fishing expeditions violate the righ: to be free from unreasonable searches has held firm in American law. That principle is violated by computer matching. The technique of matching unrelated computer tapes is designed as a general search. It is not based on any preex. Communications of the ACM June 1984 Volume 27 Number 6 1 isting evidence to direct suspicion of wrongdoing to any (2) Presumption of Innocence People in our society are not forced to bear a continu- Computer matching can turn the presumption of in- Another example of this "presumption of guilt” occurred three years ago in Florida. The state's attorney for a three-county area around Jacksonville obtained case files for all food stamp recipients in the area. He then launched fraud investigations against those receiv. ing allotments of more than $125 a month. A federal court of appeals invalidated the file search and enjoined the investigation on the ground that the targeted food stamp recipients were put in the position of having to prove the allotment they had received was not based on fraud. Construing the Food Stamp Act, the Court held that "it did not allow the [state food stamp] agency to turn over files... for criminal investigation without regard to whether a particular household has engaged in questionable behavior." Once a computer match has taken place, any person whose name appears as a "raw hit" is presumed to be guilty. In part, this is because the technology of computer matching is so compelling and in part because its purpose the detection of fraud and waste-is so commendable. The worst abuses of computer matching, such as summary termination of welfare benefits, have occurred when authorities have casually transformed this "presumption" into a conclusive proof of guilt. the indivi purposes This reasonable A traditional investigation is triggered by some evidence June 1984 Volume 27 Number 6 |