[Peace-discuss] Scary Invasion of Privacy SEND FAX~a4883u4843t0~ (fwd)

[patton paul]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 18:58:19 -0800 (PST)
From: TrueMajority <alerts at truemajority.org>
To: ppatton at uiuc.edu
Subject: Scary Invasion of Privacy
        SEND FAX~a4883u4843t0~

Protect your Privacy

Oppose the Homeland Security Act



If you are already a member of TrueMajority, you can take action on this issue
by simply hitting REPLY to this message and then SEND. A letter will
automatically be faxed to your Senators on your behalf. Please forward this
message to your friends, family and colleagues!

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http://www.truemajority.com/index.asp?action=2291&ms=priv1&ref=4843

The Senate is poised ON TUESDAY to pass a version of the "Homeland Security
Act" that would create a single database to round up personal information on
every American. If the Senate passes this bill, the government will bring
together in one grand database all the public and private information they can
get their hands on including your credit history, the magazines you subscribe
to, your banking, travel information, etc. Even conservative columnist and
former Nixon administration official William Safire is frightened by the
prospect -- see his column below.

Americans need to stop this. If you are already a member of TrueMajority,
simply hit REPLY and then SEND to send your faxes. If this message was
forwarded to you, visit the TrueMajority Action Center and send your own
letter. Just click this link:

http://www.truemajority.com/index.asp?action=2291&ms=priv1&ref=4843

The New York Times William Safire Piece:

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.

Letter to Senators:

If you are a member of Truemajority you can just click REPLY and SEND to this
email and the following letter will be faxed to your Senators on your behalf.
If this message was forwarded to you or you would like to customize this
letter, visit the TrueMajority Action Center. Just click this link:

http://www.truemajority.com/index.asp?action=2291&ms=priv1&ref=4843

Dear Senator:

I write as a constituent of yours to urge you to oppose any bill that would
create the kind of centralized database of information about every American
currently included in the version of the Homeland Security Act passed by the
House. This massive invasion of privacy is frightening and Un-American. We can
not hope to protect our freedoms by surrendering them.

Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,

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