We all know how much personal information the government has access to, but how much can they learn about a suspect when all they have is a name or alias? Quite a bit, GlobalPOV found out when we spoke to Mr. John Hermansen, CEO of Language Analysis Systems.

GlobalPOV: What is name recognition technology?
JH: Basically, it helps users better understand names from around the world and the people who use them. Name recognition is useful in national security, of course, but businesses also like to use it to do a better job of understanding and communicating with their customers, as we become a more multicultural society. So we offer a web-based tool – you type in a name, and it can instantly tell you the culture that the name comes from, the countries where it is most often found, the gender of the name, a ranked list of the most common variant spellings of the name … and all or any of these might be useful to somebody who wants to know more about the person they’re talking to. Of course, we also have tools that can search databases of names – like watch lists or customer lists – and do a better job of matching than has been available before, because the search strategy is specifically based on the culture of name.

GlobalPOV: One of the applications of this technology is its use for border patrol. But wouldn’t a person with bad intent use a false name when crossing the border?
JH: They don’t really even have to go that far. We’ve found that everyone in the world seems to know more about this glaring hole in our border systems than we do. You can just change one letter in your name, which is what Mir Aimal Kansi did. I don’t know if you remember that story – in 1993, he came into the country, got a driver’s license, bought an AK-47, and shot 5 people in front of the CIA. He got into the country and got his visa because he dropped the ‘N’ from his last name and spelled it ‘K-A-S-I,’ which would be a legitimate variant of that Pakistani name … but the computer systems at our borders at that time were just oblivious to it.

GlobalPOV: So at what point in the process does this tool become particularly valuable to the border patrol? When do they ask for information about a name? Is it when they have someone in custody?
JH: No – it starts off-shore, at what we like to call our “first line of defense.” Consulates overseas – when you apply for a visa – do the first checking there. They determine whether, for any reason, a person should be prohibited from coming into the country. They might have a history of disease that’s prohibited from coming into the country, or they might be terrorists or someone that’s a ‘person of interest,’ as they say.

All of these searches are negative searches. If the computer doesn’t find the name, you give them the visa. If you don’t get the name match at the border, you let them into the country. If gun sellers don’t get a name match, you can sell them the AK-47. So border protection is very interested in doing this, and we give them the best possible way that these lists can be searched.

GlobalPOV: Were do biometrics technologies fit into the picture?
JH: We look at it this way. Biometrics are great the second time you meet somebody. But we have hundreds of millions of names that have been collected over the years – for intelligence organizations to keep track of people who might do us harm – and we don’t have their fingerprints and retinal scans. And you see it in the paper every day – these people are coming back and forth across the border.

GlobalPOV: Do you run into any opposition from privacy advocates?
JH: People certainly do ask. Whenever you’re in the area of border protection and watch lists, these questions do arise – and they should, because they’re good questions. But the issue for us is not so much a privacy issue. We think doing a better job of name searching helps investigators to make sure they make the right decisions about identities. We have no information about people, just about names. And by putting that information in front of the people who are charged with protecting the rest of us—who sometimes have to make very rapid decisions—it helps that person to make a better decision about assigning identities.

GlobalPOV: What about the people that aren’t the bad guys? Investigations look at innocent folks too, right?
JH: Yes, that’s precisely right. But it helps on both sides. Getting the best information quickly to an analyst or border protection agent can only help to reduce what we call ‘false positives’ – when you mistakenly identify someone. So we give them better name information, and information that they can use to actually question someone. Say their documents show they are from Mexico, but their name happens to be the most popular name in Bolivia—this information gives the investigator something more to go on, and helps him make a more informed decision.

GlobalPOV: What’s the data source that you’re culling through?
JH: We’ve been doing this for a long, long time. We’ve collected enormous amounts of data, and we have tested name searching in over 200 countries around the world, so we know a lot about how names work. We’ve collected a database of almost a billion names from all over the world, so we can derive statistics from that and determine the frequency of names and their variant forms. We also have typographical errors in there, so we can see how often names are mangled, and that helps us to set up specific search techniques for certain cultures.

You might imagine that a short Chinese name would not be searched the same way that you would search a long Greek or Thai name. So we try to tailor our solution to the culture that the name comes from.

GlobalPOV: What type of data to people typically overlay the name information onto?
JH: For many years, all of our work was targeted at security-related data – intelligence databases intended to protect the border. But now we’re finding that financial institutions, for example, are interested in checking names against the OFAC list (the Office of Foreign Asset Control). They’re mandated now to make sure that their transactions don’t support terrorism. There are stiff penalties, by the way, so they’re very anxious to make sure they do a good job.

The credit industry is very interested in matching names, too. In these huge databases, one of the big problems is that you have the same person entered under several different names—and we can help these companies amalgamate those seemingly different entries. Many of these huge databases have not been well-maintained, so we have automated tools to alert people to problems they have with name data. We can also use these tools to provide additional information that can be extracted from the names they have in their database.

GlobalPOV: So someone could use your technology to determine the origins of people and market them based on ethnicity? Is that kind of stuff going on?
JH: Bingo. People are very interested in that. We just sold products to a company that has a minority and woman-owned business arm, and they want to market to women. So our gender software can say – from names all over the world – these are women’s names. We can also say ‘these are Korean names.’ So not only can they market to them, but they can be better on the customer service side – providing someone quickly who is familiar with the given culture or language.

GlobalPOV: Seems that people could be treated very unfairly based on their origin, as derived from the technology. Of course, that goes on without the technology, too.
JH: Well you’re absolutely right. This is prejudice. This is profiling. Our software, however, provides information so that people can be more discriminating, but toward a positive end. The problems of prejudice and the misuse of what we call ‘profiling’ are rooted in ignorance and generalization. The solution, of course, is education to break down generalizations and stereotypes. Our systems provide interesting information about specific names, so we feel that we are helping to break down stereotypes and generalizations – we’re providing specific, authoritative knowledge that allows people to understand a culture better. I think it’s a very positive step.

GlobalPOV: How is globalization changing the name structure? For example, are names becoming homogenized?
JH: This is a great topic for a linguist like me, because names are changing constantly. I’ll give you a couple of little anecdotes:

Some countries are actually running out of names. In Sweden and the Philippines, for example, strict historical rules about naming have caused a situation where many people have the same name, and people feel that they lose their individuality. Now, young Filipinos often choose distinctive nicknames, or—as in Sweden—more names are being “authorized” for use.

In Japan, Mongolia, and Ireland, people are reverting to older forms. In Japan, they like to put their surname first again, the way it used to be a couple of hundred years ago. Mongolians are resurrecting names that were forbidden under Communist rule. And the Irish now want to spell their names in the old Gaelic tradition – which makes for a very tough name matching issue.

Names are changing all the time, and they’re a lot of fun to watch.

GlobalPOV: Do you think there should be more regulation about how people are lumped into categories based on certain criteria?
JH: I think we have plenty of regulation. Maybe the thing to do is to streamline the regulation and educate people. Certainly we need more attention to credit authorizations – such as, red-lining that is done by people’s ZIP codes, for example – this is something that has to be constantly watched. But there’s only so much that regulation can do.

It’s education and sunlight that helps.

We’re learning considerable amounts about this now. For example, since the Enron and Worldcom debacles, people are beginning to watch their money more, and they’re interested in their credit reports, and they’ll pay $12 to Fair Isaac to find out what their credit is, and they’ll contest poor credit ratings. People didn’t do that before. For a long time, credit companies had free rein. I think it’s education that is changing that now, and it is the same thing that will change our attitudes toward other cultural criteria.

GlobalPOV: Do you think on a global scale that people have a right to privacy? What are your final thoughts on the tradeoff between national security and privacy and the direction that technology is moving?
JH: I think everyone in the world has an absolute right to privacy. But as you point out, it’s a tradeoff, and people can negotiate that privacy against the benefits of less privacy. In some cases, it’s a matter of security – and you’ll say I will let you touch my body and look at my shoes getting on this airplane, because I appreciate the exchange of more security. I will give you my email and I will give you information about the kind of products I like to buy, because I want you to know how to alert me to new deals.

That’s the kind of negotiation that people need to have about their private information, and I think you’ll see that it spans the spectrum. Some people are very private and don’t want anyone to know what’s going on. Other people I know love to receive junk mail.

Everyone has that right to privacy, but it’s a negotiable item, and you have to know the costs and benefits of giving away your information.

GlobalPOV: Do you think it’s tougher today to make assessments about which companies are trustworthy and which companies you can give your information to?
JH: I think we’re on the verge of that. You must also be getting this flurry of privacy notices written in fly spec type. How do you understand whether to opt-in or opt-out or opt-over? People are saying wait a minute. Yes, this does meet the letter of the law, but not the spirit of the law. I want something more transparent that will tell me what you’re doing with my information. We’re going to hear a lot more about this from the public, and it’s an education process that will take some time. We’ll see some headlines about this, and there will be more reaction – whether it’s about exploitation, identity theft or slamming – as people get more involved with the value and use of their personal information.

GlobalPOV: Are people going to demand that same transparency in terms of what the government is doing with data?
JH: The problem with transparency in government is that you will actually be able to see how it works! But, I think that people should get more information, because it gives them a sense of security. That’s what the administration and Congress want now – for people to have a sense of security and to trust their government. And, that’s an education process again.

I’m afraid I refer to this educational notion too often, but I feel that we’ve been naive and asleep about our world for a some time now–we’ve left important doors open, and we need to decide how we’re going to deal with these issues. And government has to be more open about what it’s going to do and how it’s going to do it.

There will always be classified information—and there should be—but the justification, and processes and methods by which personal information is captured and used … knowing what those are is what gives people a feeling of security.

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