FC: William Safire on Pentagon surveillance: "You Are a Suspect!"

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

A number of politechnicals sent this along last night, with Marc being the 
first. He notes that EPIC has a FOIA case against the Defense Department 
pending in federal court in Washington DC to uncover more information about 
Poindexter and DARPA. See also:

"Pentagon's Big Brother computer: Echelon on steroids?"
http://www.politechbot.com/p-04160.html

"Pentagon wants a 'Big Brother' supercomputer, from NYT"
http://www.politechbot.com/p-04151.html

And some previous columns by William Safire:
http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=safire

-Declan

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Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 23:27:56 -0500
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
From: Marc Rotenberg <rotenberg () epic org>
Subject: Safire on TIA ("You Are a Suspect")

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http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/14/opinion/14SAFI.html?pagewanted=print&position=bottom


November 14, 2002

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
your 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.

[...] 




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