ITGS HL Exercise 1.1 - Reliability

1.       Read the article below ‘A national computerised criminal History System’.

a.       Identify the number of organisations that are: (2 marks)

i.         Responsible for collecting the data

ii.       Will have access to the data

b.       Describe the two questions that arise from this proposal. (4 marks)

c.       Based on its reliability, should this system be used? (5 marks)

A National Computerized Criminal History (CCH) System?

In I986, Kenneth C. Laudon wrote a book called Dossier Society: Value Choices in the Design of Na­tional Information Systems. His purpose was primar­ily to examine the FBI's plan for a national comput­erized criminal history (CCH) system, and the impact it would have on our society and on per­sonal privacy. He first examines the positive side of such a proposal-"the professional record-keeper vision;' as he calls it. This would foresee "a more ra­tional world in which instantly available and accu­rate information would be used to spare the inno­cent and punish the guilty" (Laudon, I986, p. I8). He says that this vision is held primarily by police, district attorneys, and criminal courts.

The question of whether such information could be accurate and instantly available should be exam­ined in the light of the performance of similar smaller systems; the odds of increasing errors and decreasing reliability go up alarmingly as the size of a system increases.

As Laudon points out:

The significance of a national CCH extends beyond the treatment of persons with a prior criminal record. Creating a single system is a multijurisdictional, multiorganizational effort which requires linking more than 60,000 crimi­nal justice agencies with more than 500,000 workers, thousands of other government agen­cies, and private employers, from the local school district to the Bank of America, who will use the system for employment screening. (Laudon, I986, p. I6)

Two questions immediately come to mind about such a system: (I) What kind of reliability can it possibly have (and what will be the magnitude of the consequences of system failures or reporting er­rors)? (2) Is it appropriate, or even legal, for a sys­tem designed for one purpose (criminal record­keeping for the justice system) to be used for such a different purpose (employment screening)?

Laudon also notes that, in addition to the fin­gerprint records on roughly 36 million people with criminal records, the FBI has fingerprints of over twice as many citizens who do not have any crimi­nal record, but have had their fingerprints taken for the armed forces, work in nuclear plants, work on defense contracts, for any work requiring a security clearance for a job, and others. With the amazing capabilities of computerized fingerprint identifica­tions, it would be quite feasible to run all of these prints, and not just those of people with criminal records, in any investigation. This would greatly in­crease the chances of "false positives" and the re­sulting invasion of innocent people's privacy and equanimity.

The second perspective regarding the national CCH, Laudon writes, is the "dossier society vi­sion;' held by members of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), state and federal legislative research staffs, and defense lawyers. Proponents of this vision think in terms of a system with "imper­fect information and incomplete knowledge;' a "runaway" system that 'would be out of anyone's control. Linking this information (see the upcom­ing section on "computer matching") with that from other agencies such as the Social Security Ad­ministration, the IRS, and the Department of De­fense, could create "a caste of unemployable people, largely composed of minorities and poor people, who will no longer be able to rehabilitate them­selves or find gainful employment in even the most remote communities" (Laudon, 1986, pp. 20-21).

He also points out that the present system already discriminates against those who live in poor and ghetto neighborhoods, where the police may regu­larly make a pass down the street in the summer and haul everyone in for questioning, thus creating "criminal records" for many who violated no laws (Laudon, 1986, pp. 226-227).