FC: SF Weekly columnist suggests surveilling John Poindexter at home

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Previous Politech message:

"Transcript of Pentagon briefing on Poindexter's 'TIA' program"
http://www.politechbot.com/p-04186.html

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http://sfweekly.com/issues/2002-11-27/smith.html/1/index.html

   Calling All Yahoos
   Worried about what John Poindexter's up to as federal information
   czar? Call his home number and ask.
   BY MATT SMITH

   [...]

   I learned, Iran-Contra
   conspirator Adm. John Poindexter had been made head of a Pentagon
   division that would compile a vast database of every financial,
   medical, employment, school, credit, and government record for every
   American, so that law enforcement and spooks might better spy on us.

   Still, there's always a bright side: Perhaps Adm. Poindexter may be
   able to also use his new database as a force for good, to divine
   exactly why America has gone so terribly, terribly wrong.

   Optimistically, I dialed John and Linda Poindexter's number -- (301)
   424-6613 -- at their home at 10 Barrington Fare in Rockville, Md.,
   hoping the good admiral and excused criminal might be able to offer
   some insight. A pleasant-sounding woman I think might have been Linda,
   the former Episcopal priest and now effusive Catholic, answered the
   phone.

   [...]

   I urge modern California founding fathers and mothers to embark on a
   similar campaign of social impropriety: Call Poindexter's home number,
   all of you, several times a day. If you get Linda, ask about her
   conversion from Episcopal priesthood to Catholicism; if you get John,
   ask why he needs our tollbooth records.

   For those of you revolutionaries with private investigator friends,
   ask for even more sensitive information on Reagan's former national
   security adviser. I'd be glad to publish anything readers can
   convincingly claim to have obtained legally.

   [...]

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http://cryptome.org/tia-eyeball.htm

   The SF Weekly's column by Matt Smith in the Dec 3 issue points out
   that there may be some information that John M. and Linda Poindexter
   of 10 Barrington Fare, Rockville, MD, 20850, may be missing in their
   pursuit of total information awareness.  He suggests that people with
   information to offer should phone +1 301 424 6613 to speak with that
   corrupt official and his wife.  Neighbors Thomas E. Maxwell, 67, at 8
   Barringon Fare (+1 301 251 1326), James F. Galvin, 56, at 12 (+1 301
   424 0089), and Sherrill V. Stant (nee Knight) at 6, may also lack some
   information that would be valuable to them in making decisions --
   decisions that could affect the basic civil rights of every American.

   Some people are suspicious that the degenerate Poindexter's Total
   Information Awareness system will be used to harass and track the
   activities of people who some significant fraction of society disagree
   with.  They fear a replacement of today's general tolerance (and
   official blindness to one's Bill-of-Rights-protected activities such
   as speech and association), with specific harassment of those whose
   names pop up in the database.  Such harassment of people who are not
   reasonably suspected of criminal activity would destroy much of value
   in our society, such as the presumption of innocence and the "live and
   let live" philosophy that encourages diversity.  Offering dissidents
   "a death of a thousand cuts" by constantly harassing them and denying
   them the privileges of ordinary life would be far worse than charging
   them with a (bogus) crime, which they could clear up merely by
   demonstrating their innocence in court.

   It would be good to have an early public demonstration of just how bad
   life could become for such targeted citizens.  While ratfink's system
   is probably not working yet, and a large part of it is classified,
   much of it can be manually simulated for demonstration purposes.
   Public records can be manually searched and then posted to the net by
   people who happen to be looking there for something else.  Many
   Internet public records search sites also exist; try searching for
   "People finder".  (Matt Smith at matt.smith () sfweekly com has offered
   to "publish anything that readers can convincingly claim to have
   obtained legally".)  Photographs and videos of the target, their
   house, car, family, and associates, can be made and circulated to
   demonstrate facial recognition techniques.

   Employees at various businesses and organizations such as airlines,
   credit card authorizers, rental-car agencies, shops, gyms, schools,
   tollbooths, garbage services, banks, taxis, honest civil servants and
   police officers, and restaurants could demonstrate denial of service
   to such targeted people.  A simple "We won't serve YOUR KIND OF
   PEOPLE" would do, as was practiced on black people for many decades.
   More subtle forms of denial of service are possible, such as "You've
   been 'randomly' selected as a security risk, I'll have to insist that
   [some degrading thing happen to you]".  Or merely, "I can't seem to
   get this credit card to work, sir, and those twenties certainly look
   counterfeit to me."

   Those with access to DMV and criminal records databases, credit card
   records, telephone bills, tax records, birth and death and marriage
   records, medical records, and similar personally identifiable
   databases could combine their information publicly to assist in the
   demonstration.  This is how TIA is intended to work -- the government
   would get privileged access to all these databases, access that the
   rest of us do not normally have.  But some of us have access to
   various of these databases today, and can demonstrate how the TIA
   system might work.

   People who associated closely with such a targeted individual, such as
   their families, relatives, friends, neighbors, protective secret
   service agents, and business associates, might find themselves swept
   up in the information dragnet.  Such a demonstration would graphically
   reveal the societal dangers of deploying such systems on a wide scale
   against a large number of citizens -- preferably early enough that
   such a deployment could be prevented, rather than reversed after major
   harm was caused.

   Even if some of the information that people end up revealing or using
   about such targeted scumbags is incorrect, such a public demonstration
   would highlight the damaging effects that incorrect database
   information can have on innocent peoples' lives, when used to target
   them for harassment without due process of law.  When this happens to
   innocents under classified or secret systems such as the No-Fly lists,
   the public seldom finds out about it.

   All in all I think such a demonstration would be highly educational,
   as well as newsworthy and entertaining.

   John Gilmore




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