David Dudine wrote: >Dear Group, > >Lee has given me permission to post this from conservative William Safire. > >If you do not want the government watching your internet activity and >reading your email, you should contact your Senators IMMEDIATELY and voice >your opposition. It is being rammed through by Bush as you read this. > >David Dudine > >.......................... > > > > > >New York Times, November 14, 2002: Opinion > >You Are a Suspect > >By WILLIAM SAFIRE > > >WASHINGTON -- If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, >here is what will happen to you: > >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 is not some far-out Orwellian scenario. It is what will happen to your >personal freedom in the next few weeks if John Poindexter gets the >unprecedented power he seeks. > >Remember Poindexter? Brilliant man, first in his class at the Naval >Academy, later earned a doctorate in physics, rose to national security >adviser under President Ronald Reagan. He had this brilliant idea of >secretly selling missiles to Iran to pay ransom for hostages, and with the >illicit proceeds to illegally support contras in Nicaragua. > >A jury convicted Poindexter in 1990 on five felony counts of misleading >Congress and making false statements, but an appeals court overturned the >verdict because Congress had given him immunity for his testimony. He >famously asserted, "The buck stops here," arguing that the White House >staff, and not the president, was responsible for fateful decisions that >might prove embarrassing. > >This ring-knocking master of deceit is back again with a plan even more >scandalous than Iran-contra. He heads the "Information Awareness Office" in >the otherwise excellent Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which >spawned the Internet and stealth aircraft technology. Poindexter is now >realizing his 20-year dream: getting the "data-mining" power to snoop on >every public and private act of every American. > >Even the hastily passed U.S.A. Patriot Act, which widened the scope of the >Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and weakened 15 privacy laws, raised >requirements for the government to report secret eavesdropping to Congress >and the courts. But Poindexter's assault on individual privacy rides >roughshod over such oversight. > >He is determined to break down the wall between commercial snooping and >secret government intrusion. The disgraced admiral dismisses such necessary >differentiation as bureaucratic "stovepiping." And he has been given a $200 >million budget to create computer dossiers on 300 million Americans. > >When George W. Bush was running for president, he stood foursquare in >defense of each person's medical, financial and communications privacy. But >Poindexter, whose contempt for the restraints of oversight drew the Reagan >administration into its most serious blunder, is still operating on the >presumption that on such a sweeping theft of privacy rights, the buck ends >with him and not with the president. > >This time, however, he has been seizing power in the open. In the past week >John Markoff of The Times, followed by Robert O'Harrow of The Washington >Post, have revealed the extent of Poindexter's operation, but editorialists >have not grasped its undermining of the Freedom of Information Act. > >Political awareness can overcome "Total Information Awareness," the >combined force of commercial and government snooping. In a similar >overreach, Attorney General Ashcroft tried his Terrorism Information and >Prevention System (TIPS), but public outrage at the use of gossips and >postal workers as snoops caused the House to shoot it down. The Senate >should now do the same to this other exploitation of fear. > >The Latin motto over Poindexter"s new Pentagon office reads "Scientia Est >Potentia" -- "knowledge is power." Exactly: the government's infinite >knowledge about you is its power over you. "We're just as concerned as the >next person with protecting privacy," this brilliant mind blandly assured >The Post. A jury found he spoke falsely before. >
Who cares! They've been tapping our phones for years, and I wouldn't put it past them to be reading our mail on occasion. This stuff is strictly hit and miss because they don't have the manpower for a full time operation. Look at the numbers and see how realistic it will be. Use conservative numbers. A million households with computers on the internet. Each home averages 10 e-mails per day. That's 10 million e-mails per day. How many e-mails can you read in 8 hours? If you think postal workers go off the deep end on occasion, wait until this group gets into full swing. Personally, I wouldn't waste my spit. But that's me. -- Tony LaFemina Major in Layout & Design Techniques Minor in Software Fundamentals http://hometown.aol.com/visitmacland/index.html mailto:remacs at optonline.net The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will be November 26 For more information, see <http://www.aye.net/~lcs>. A calendar of activities is at <http://www.calsnet.net/macusers>.
