Would you rather be strip-searched or data-mined?

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday November 14, 2002 17:29 by bertie and political police

Echelon goes overground in US

Why don't SF mention Echelon when asked about spy-rings. I'm sure they know all about it

EXTRACT:

As neocon columnist Bill Safire points out in today's New York Times, the Homeland Security Act will, among other things, empower an ominous new government agency called the Office of Information Awareness (OIA). The mysterious agency, much-discussed here on GNN, would allow:

"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."

Full Text: http://www.guerrillanews.com/civil_liberties/doc835.html