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Archives for May 2006

Twenty-First Century Wiretapping

May 8, 2006 by

The revelation that the National Security Agency has been wiretapping communications crossing the U.S. border (and possibly within the U.S.), without warrants, has started many angry conversations across the country, and rightly so. Here is an issue that challenges our most basic conception of the purposes of government and its relation to citizens.

Today I am starting a series of posts about this issue. Most discussions of the wiretap program focus on two questions: (1) Is the program legal? and (2) Regardless of its legality, does the program, as currently executed, serve our national interest (bearing in mind the national interest in both national security and citizens’ privacy)? These questions are surely important, but I want to set them aside here. I’m setting aside the legal question because it’s outside my expertise. I’m setting aside any evaluation of the current program for two reasons. First, we don’t know the exact scope of the current wiretap program. Second, most people – on both sides – think the second question is an easy one, and easy questions lead to boring conversations.

I want to focus instead on the more basic questions of what the extent of national security wiretapping should be, and why. The why question is especially important.

The first thing to realize is that this is not your parents’ wiretap debate. Though the use (and sometimes misuse) of wiretapping has long been a contentious issue, the terms of the debate have changed. I’m not referring here to the claim that 9/11 changed everything. What I mean is that wiretapping technology has changed in ways that ought to reframe the debate.

Two technology changes are important. The first is the dramatic drop in the cost of storage, making it economical to record vast amounts of communications traffic. The second technology change is the use of computer algorithms to analyze intercepted communications. Traditionally, a wiretap would be heard (or read) immediately by a person, or recorded for later listening by a person. Today computer algorithms can sift through intercepted communications, looking for sophisticated patterns, and can select certain items to be recorded or heard by a person.

Both changes are driven by Moore’s Law, the rule of thumb that the capability of digital technologies doubles every eighteen months or, equivalently, improves by a factor of 100 every ten years. This means that in 2016 government will be able to store 100 times more intercepted messages, and will be able to devote 100 times more computing capability to its analysis algorithms, compared to today. If the new world of wiretapping has not entirely arrived, it will be here before long.

So government will have greater eavesdropping capabilities and, more interestingly, it will have different capabilities. How should we respond? Surely it is not right simply to let government do whatever it wants – this has never been our policy. Nor can it be right to let government do no wiretapping at all – this has not been our policy either. What we need to understand is where to draw the line, and what kind of oversight and safeguards we need to keep our government near the line we have drawn. I hope that the next several posts can shed some small amount of light on these questions.

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Return to Monkey High

May 3, 2006 by

Newsweek has released its annual list of America’s top high schools, using the same flawed formula as last year. Here’s what I wrote then:

Here is Newsweek’s formula:
“Public schools are ranked according to a ratio devised by Jay Mathews: the number of Advanced Placement and/or International Baccalaureate tests taken by all students at a school in 2004 divided by the number of graduating seniors.”

Both parts of this ratio are suspect. In the numerator, they count the number of students who show up for AP/IB tests, not the number who get an acceptable score. Schools that require their students to take AP/IB tests will do well on this factor, regardless of how poorly they educate their students. In the denominator is the number of students who graduate. That’s right — every student who graduates lowers the school’s rating.

To see the problems with Newsweek’s formula, let’s consider a hypothetical school, Monkey High, where all of the students are monkeys. As principal of Monkey High, I require my students to take at least one AP test. (Attendance is enforced by zookeepers.) The monkeys do terribly on the test, but Newsweek gives them credit for showing up anyway. My monkey students don’t learn enough to earn a high school diploma — not to mention their behavioral problems — so I flunk them all out. Monkey High gets an infinite score on the Newsweek formula: many AP tests taken, divided by zero graduates. It’s the best high school in the universe!

[Note to math geeks annoyed by the division-by-zero: I can let one monkey graduate if that would make you happier.]

Though it didn’t change the formula this year, Newsweek did change which schools are eligible to appear on the list. In the past, schools with selective admission policies were not included, on the theory that they could boost their ratings by cherry-picking the best students. This year, selective schools are eligible, provided that their average SAT score is below 1300 (or their average ACT score is below 27).

This allows me to correct an error in last year’s post. Monkey High, with its selective monkeys-only admission policy, would have been barred from Newsweek’s list last year. But this year it qualifies, thanks to the monkeys’ low SAT scores.

Newsweek helpfully includes a list of selective schools that would have made the list but were barred due to SAT scores. This excluded-schools list is topped by a mind-bending caption:

Newsweek excluded these high performers from the list of Best High Schools because so many of their students score well above average on the SAT and ACT.

(If that doesn’t sound wrong to you, go back and read it again.) The excluded schools include, among others, the famous Thomas Jefferson H.S. for Science and Technology, in northern Virginia. Don’t lose heart, Jefferson teachers – with enough effort you can lower your students’ SAT scores and become one of America’s best high schools.

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