And it does get worse....
http://news.com.com/2102-1023-966311.html
Jerry
On Tuesday, November 19, 2002, at 08:44 PM, Tony LaFemina wrote:
> 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>.
>
>
>
>
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>.
