Big brother is watching

[Prometheus]

Here's the newest one straight out of the 1984 playbook:


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.

-cont-

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/14/o...00&en=3778829e1bec3dc2&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

 

[WODIN]

They may be able to collect all this data and have a "Grand Datbase" but hell, I'll die before a query on my existance ever finishes running. LOL!!!

 

[PoyeBoy]

Dear god, I really hop that does not happen, so long freedom

 

[Code]

The NY Times is confusing privacy with freedom. In no way would anything the NY Times listed affect your freedom, it simply affects the level of privacy you maintain, which is probably a lot less private than you know anyway.

1.) The intelligence community doesn't have enough manpower to analyze the TEREBYTES of data they collect DAILY as it is. Recording every single purchase made would only complicate the problem.

2.) It is illegal to collect intelligence on US citizen's living on US soil who are NOT suspected of felony.

3.) Do you really care if the US records how often you purchase tampax, eggs and juice?

 

[Doktor Bollix]

So much for the commitment of the Republicans to individual liberty. Truly disgusting.

 

[Code]

So much for the commitment of the Republicans to individual liberty. Truly disgusting.

Liberty has nothing to do with privacy.

 

[Doktor Bollix]

Liberty has nothing to do with privacy.

Wrong. The Supreme Court has found privacy to be an unenumerated right inherent in the Constitution based on the 14th, 9th and 4th Amendments. Numerous decisions have been based on this right.

Infringements on privacy by government the beginning of the end of real liberty, this is a historical truism.

 

[Code]

Wrong. The Supreme Court has found privacy to be an unenumerated right inherent in the Constitution based on the 14th, 9th and 4th Amendments. Numerous decisions have been based on this right.

Infringements on privacy by government the beginning of the end of real liberty, this is a historical truism.

Your purchases are not private, period.
Do you care that the Dept of Homeland Defense has your grocery list?

And besides, it's illegal to collect intelligence on US citizens living on US soil unless they're suspected of a felony.

 

[Doktor Bollix]

Your purchases are not private, period.
Do you care that the Dept of Homeland Defense has your grocery list?

And besides, it's illegal to collect intelligence on US citizens living on US soil unless they're suspected of a felony.

I certainly do care that I am being spied on by the government all the time, that doesn't count as intelligence? My main consolation is that the government is so sclerotic and incompetent it won't mean shit.

 

[Code]

I certainly do care that I am being spied on by the government all the time, that doesn't count as intelligence? My main consolation is that the government is so sclerotic and incompetent it won't mean shit.

Exactly, item one on my original reply clearly outlines the fact that it DOESN"T matter if they do, they'll never have the manpower to analyze everyone's grocery list anyway.

Just start buying with cash, problem solved.

 

[Prometheus]

Liberty has nothing to do with privacy.

That is absurd.

What other possible purpose could be served by the government compiling this information, if not control over the population? Why else would they do this?

A full description of the loss of liberty this might (will) lead to is beyond the scope of this board, and Orwell did a much better job of it that I ever could. If you haven't, I recommend reading 1984 as a starting point.

 

[Doktor Bollix]

they'll never have the manpower to analyze everyone's grocery list anyway.

Just start buying with cash, problem solved.

Lol. Aren't you the computer guru? Look down the road 10, 20, 30 years.

Cash will be illegal eventually.

 

[Code]

That is absurd.

What other possible purpose could be served by the government compiling this information, if not control over the population? Why else would they do this?

A full description of the loss of liberty this might (will) lead to is beyond the scope of this board, and Orwell did a much better job of it that I ever could. If you haven't, I recommend reading 1984 as a starting point.

I've read that piece of trash book.

The idea that the government can do anything with the BILLIONS of transactions DAILY is absurd. It's merely a stop-gap to provide the Dept of Homeland Defense a place to use forensics to track terrorists. If you read the bill you'd know this.

They cannot legally act on your grocery list if you aren't a suspect. In fact, to presume this data isn't already accesible to the federal government is absurd. A few simple phone calls and they have it anyway.

This simply gets rid of the need to wake some poor, hardworking American (who is likely planning a riot because he makes too little money) who works for the credit card company.

 

[Y_lifter]

And I bet I'll STILL:

Get asked for my Account # "3 times" every visit to the bank
Get Ballance Due Bills from Medical Insurance screwups
Get Porno Popup Adds and Spam E-Mail for stuff I will never buy
Get asked to provide "Proof" of elligibility for everything

I call B.S. on this ever working in my lifetime

 

[Prometheus]

They cannot legally act on your grocery list if you aren't a suspect. In fact, to presume this data isn't already accesible to the federal government is absurd. A few simple phone calls and they have it anyway.

That's the point, isn't it - to change the system so that they CAN legally act, so they CAN collate and cross-reference the billions of transactions?

If Visa can track billions of transactions, then presumably so can the government. And when they don't have to poll several different corporations, vendors, etc., but have control over the information and how it is organized, from the point of the transaction, it then becomes that much easier to search and match it to identify whatever act they disapprove of.

again, I ask - if as you say, they have all the info. already, they WHY would they be working to centralize it?

 

[Code]

That's the point, isn't it - to change the system so that they CAN legally act, so they CAN collate and cross-reference the billions of transactions?

If Visa can track billions of transactions, then presumably so can the government. And when they don't have to poll several different corporations, vendors, etc., but have control over the information and how it is organized, from the point of the transaction, it then becomes that much easier to search and match it to identify whatever act they disapprove of.

again, I ask - if as you say, they have all the info. already, they WHY would they be working to centralize it?

Umm, the same reason companies centralize everything else. Ease of access and ease of use.

And Visa doesn't track MasterCard and American Express and Diner's Club and Discover and the HUNDREDS of branded cards in the US.

If you cared you should have voted democrat. Or if you really cared you should be writing your representatives right now instead of moaning about lost liberty on a fitness chat board.

 

[Frackal]

How dare you call that book a piece of trash you little shit

 

[Code]

How dare you call that book a piece of trash you little shit

It was a liberal propagandist bit of drivel. Very well written though.


Most of the people who bitch about this also bitch that the Freedom of Information Act isn't revealing enough.

Truthfully, I'm right in the middle on this issue. A lot of good can come from this and a whole lotta bad. I'm willing to have my credit card purchases recorded (since I don't have any cards) in an effort to avoid terrorist acts on my soil.

 

[john937]

Well if people around here don't think things like this affect them
remember the next time you email a source for a delivery,
and the source asks for payment thru paypal,
and paypal debits your visa.
The result of this legislation is that audit trail would be automaticly collected, and legal evidence in court.
This is just one more step down the road to the "mark of the beast", Rev 13:17 "so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name."