CS-480_Senior Seminar
                                   Fall '02
                               Marwan Aburdeneh

                     Study questions for Aftermath of 9/11

Ralph R. Miller. Information Management in the Aftermath of 9/11.
Communications of the ACM, V45/n9, Sept. 2002  and
Friedrich W. Kistermann. Locating the Victims: The Nonrole of Punched Card
Technology and Census Work.  Annals of the History of Computing, v19/n2, 1997.


1. In what ways can the rights of the individual and the rights of the 
   government conflict? Who determines what rights individuals have? Who
   determines what rights governments have? Why give rights to either to begin
   with? 


2. How much knowledge should the government have in its databases? What is
   an example of information the government clearly should gather? What is an
   example of information it should clearly not gather?  Shouldn't they collect
   all the information they can collect that might be useful in protecting
   against things like terrorist attacks?


3. Should government institutions be able to share information? If the 
   information already exists in separate databases, why shouldn't the
   government be entitled to put that information together? 


4. In what ways have people proposed using information technology to help 
   detect and prevent attacks like that of 9/11 or the Oklahoma City bombing?
   What does the Viewpoint article have to say about the likelihood of success
   of these measures? 


5. What technology was available in Nazi Germany for information processing?
   To what extent was this technology used to identify and track Jews?  How
   might have the technology been used to make this process more effective?
   What does the Annals article have to say about the potential dangers of
   government information gathering?