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1984, it's here now...
| Message Board > General Chitchat > 1984, it's here now... |
| jay brown User Info... | GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS, UNBELIEVABLE NEWS by James W. Harris Federal Computer Database to Spy on All Americans Alarming new federal government plans for spying on all Americans are straight out of George Orwell's 1984. The feds are busily creating a massive database that will create files on virtually every American from cradle to grave. The Pentagon's creepy new Office of Information Awareness is building a system called "Total Information Awareness." Total Information Awareness will, among other things, monitor virtually every purchase and financial transaction made by American citizens to seek "patterns indicative of terrorist activity." This consumer information will be merged with government database information including visa records, passports, arrest records or reports of "suspicious activity" previously given to law enforcement agencies. The program will also pursue development of biometric technology to enable the further identification and tracking of individuals. According to federal spokesmen, such things as large cash withdrawals, or the purchase of one-way airline tickets or firearms, could trigger investigations via the Total Information Awareness database. The database will know your reading habits, phone and Internet use (thus creating a First Amendment chilling effect), know when you buy a gun (thus creating de facto national gun registration), and so on. No warrant, no suspicion of criminal activity is required for this information-gathering. According to the ACLU, Total Information Awareness will "effectively provide government officials with immediate access to our personal information: all of our communications (phone calls, emails and web searches), financial records, purchases, prescriptions, school records, medical records and travel history....Under this program, our entire lives would be catalogued and available to government officials." The Office of Information Awareness's unbelievable logo seems to flaunt the Orwellian nature of the agency: a huge eye atop a pyramid scanning the globe, with the Latin motto "Knowledge is Power." See it for yourself at: http://www.reason.com/0210/artifact.shtml As Reason Magazine noted: "If you wanted to play on the fears of every paranoiac in the country, you couldn't do much better than the Office of Information Awareness's logo." Of course, given the unprecedented nature of the Total Information Awareness program, it's hardly paranoid to be alarmed by this sinister agency. If that wasn't enough to set you shivering, the Total Information Awareness program was conceived by, and is headed by, the notorious John Poindexter, the former national security adviser to President Reagan who was convicted on five counts of misleading Congress and making false statements during the Iran-Contra investigation. "John has a real passion for this project," one government official told Fox News. (Why aren't we surprised?) Total Information Awareness is a police-state measure, pure and simple. It violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and it will mean a society in which federal agents are constantly monitoring every move of every citizen. The government -- of course -- defends Total Information Awareness as a necessary tool to fight terrorism. British statesman William Pitt (1759-1806) had the proper response to that: "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." Increasingly it seems the biggest threat to American liberties isn't from terrorists, but rather from government officials intent on doing to our Constitutional liberties what the 9-11 terrorists did to the World Trade Center. (Sources: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,70992,00.html http://www.aclu.org/Privacy/Privacy.cfm?ID=11323&c=130 http://www.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/#resources http://www.cato.org/research/articles/pena-021122.html ) - Wed, 5 Feb 2003 8:27pm | ||
| S.V. | That doesn't surprise me too much. They probably have scads of files on us sweet, unassuming Canadians too. Wasn't there a movie/book about arresting people for their potential/future crimes based on their patterns of behaviour??? Watch out JB...you could be next ;) ;) - Wed, 5 Feb 2003 11:26pm | ||
| Tycho Brahe | I'm planning my hermit lifestyle now as we speak. I will live in the bush, raise goats, and have a stock pile of arms for when it all goes down. Who's with me? - Thu, 6 Feb 2003 3:46am | ||
| bud | I'm with you, as long as we can grow lots of weed too. And maybe something other than goat, cause goat is kinda gamey. Emus maybe? And we'll need some chicks. A couple tanks would be a good idea, and for sure, no doubt about it, we'll need some hockey on tv. - Thu, 6 Feb 2003 11:34am | ||
| Dude | What are you talking about? Stewed goat is the shit. - Thu, 6 Feb 2003 3:39pm | ||
| bud | goat tastes ok, but it's pretty gamey and tough. It gets old fast. bah, if we're growing the ganja and we've got some hockey, then who cares? - Thu, 6 Feb 2003 4:23pm | ||
| S.V. | Smoke enough ganja and you'll eat just about anything...goats,emus or otherwise ;) Personally I would stick with ducks n' chickens. - Thu, 6 Feb 2003 6:20pm | ||
| Spark | jman, if only the rest of the world would join us in our pursuit of an endless bong. then the "awareness" agency would be like where's the pot man? - Fri, 7 Feb 2003 12:04am | ||
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