[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Scary Invasion of Privacy SEND FAX~a4883u9568t0~

Tue Nov 19 10:52:57 CST 2002

>Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 18:39:18 -0800 (PST)
>From: TrueMajority <alerts at truemajority.org>
>To: mitten at life.uiuc.edu
>Subject: Scary Invasion of 
>Privacy                                              SEND FAX~a4883u9568t0~
>X-MailScanner: Found to be clean
>
>
>
>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!
>
>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=9568>http://www.truemajority.com/index.asp? 
>action=2291&ms=priv1&ref=9568
>
>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=9568>http://www.truemajority.com/index.asp? 
>action=2291&ms=priv1&ref=9568
>
>
>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=9568>http://www.truemajority.com/index.asp? 
>action=2291&ms=priv1&ref=9568
>
>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,
>
>
>
>++++++++++++++++++++++++
>You received this message because mitten at life.uiuc.edu signed up to 
>receive emails from the TrueMajority/Contract With The Planet campaign. To 
>be removed from this list, send an email to alerts at truemajority.org with 
>"remove" in the subject line.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.cu.groogroo.com/mailman/archive/peace-discuss/attachments/20021119/2c6fa4aa/attachment.html