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Safire on Total Information Awareness
Posted by Paul Szynol on Thursday, November 14 @ 13:34:30 EST Privacy
William Safire has written a scathing review of the Pentagon's proposal. It begins thus.
Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend — all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."
The rest is here.
 
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Re: Safire on Total Information Awareness (Score: 1)
by jackjumper on Thursday, November 14 @ 15:41:58 EST
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Here's what I sent my legislators:

I am writing to ask you to make every effort to prevent the so-called "Total Information Awareness" system that John Poindexter and the Defense Dept's Information Awareness Office want to create. This system would systematically snoop on most every public and private action that you take. My understanding is that a provision of the Homeland Security Act contains this odious measure. As William Saffire says in the New York Times (or is quoting him a DMCA violation?):

"Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend — all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."

To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you — passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance — and you have the supersnoop's dream: a "Total Information Awareness" about every U.S. citizen"

This sort of surveillance should be absolutely repellent in an open and free society, and I am disgusted that it is being considered at all. Personal privacy and government openness should be the hallmark of the United States. It seems that the Republican government wants to turn that on its head. This is an invitation to abuse - if we visit the ACLU web site are we going to be on some Defense Dept list? What about this letter? This measure would be an incredible chilling of free and open debate.

This measure must be defeated.

Thank you

Tom Haviland


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Constitutional Justification? (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Thursday, November 14 @ 21:18:57 EST
What Constitutional justification is the USG offering for this project? Under what Constitutional (or even statutory) authority can the government just decide to start linking databases and conducting searches without probable cause or warrents? Has Pointdexter or anyone else addresses this point?

Cranky Observer


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