[CanYoAssDigIt] Re: [ProgressiveTalk] DATA MINING AND SPYING ON AMERICANS

"And now ChoicePoint and George Bush want your blood. Forget your
phone bill. ChoicePoint, a sickened executive of the company told us
in confidence, "hope[s] to build a database of DNA samples from
every person in the United States ...linked to all the other
information held by CP [ChoicePoint]" from medical to voting
records."

And I thought that this was my one line of wild sci fi exaggeration
when I updated California Uber Alles in 2004:

Now it is 1984
Two decades late but at your door
We're here for you, resistance futile
We have your DNA on file

A couple of lines of my song "Christmas Bush" are weirdly precient, too.

Listen to them (and my other protest song "Golden Age of Beer") while
it's still legal, at:

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=104664

On 5/13/06, brian305 <brian305@yahoo.com> wrote:
> The Times and USA Today have Missed the Bigger Story -- Again
>
> By Greg Palast
>
> 05/12/06 -"ICH" - -I know you're shocked -- SHOCKED! -- that George
> Bush is listening in on all your phone calls. Without a warrant.
> That's nothing. And it's not news.
>
> This is: the snooping into your phone bill is just the snout of the
> pig of a strange, lucrative link-up between the Administration's
> Homeland Security spy network and private companies operating beyond
> the reach of the laws meant to protect us from our government. You
> can call it the privatization of the FBI -- though it is better
> described as the creation of a private KGB.
>
> The leader in the field of what is called "data mining," is a
> company, formed in 1997, called, "ChoicePoint, Inc," which has
> sucked up over a billion dollars in national security contracts.
>
> Worried about Dick Cheney listening in Sunday on your call to Mom?
> That ain't nothing. You should be more concerned that they are
> linking this info to your medical records, your bill purchases and
> your entire personal profile including, not incidentally, your
> voting registration. Five years ago, I discovered that ChoicePoint
> had already gathered 16 billion data files on Americans -- and I
> know they've expanded their ops at an explosive rate.
>
> They are paid to keep an eye on you -- because the FBI can't. For
> the government to collect this stuff is against the law unless
> you're suspected of a crime. (The law in question is the
> Constitution.) But ChoicePoint can collect if for "commercial"
> purchases -- and under the Bush Administration's suspect reading of
> the Patriot Act -- our domestic spying apparatchiks can then BUY the
> info from ChoicePoint.
>
> Who ARE these guys selling George Bush a piece of you?
>
> ChoicePoint's board has more Republicans than a Palm Beach country
> club. It was funded, and its board stocked, by such Republican sugar
> daddies as billionaires Bernie Marcus and Ken Langone -- even after
> Langone was charged by the Securities Exchange Commission with abuse
> of inside information.
>
> I first ran across these guys in 2000 in Florida when our
> Guardian/BBC team discovered the list of 94,000 "felons" that
> Katherine Harris had ordered removed from Florida's voter rolls
> before the election. Virtually every voter purged was innocent of
> any crime except, in most cases, Voting While Black. Who came up
> with this electoral hit list that gave Bush the White House?
> ChoicePoint, Inc.
>
> And worse, they KNEW the racially-tainted list of felons was bogus.
> And when we caught them, they lied about it. While they've since
> apologized to the NAACP, ChoicePoint's ethnic cleansing of voter
> rolls has been amply assuaged by the man the company elected.
>
> And now ChoicePoint and George Bush want your blood. Forget your
> phone bill. ChoicePoint, a sickened executive of the company told us
> in confidence, "hope[s] to build a database of DNA samples from
> every person in the United States ...linked to all the other
> information held by CP [ChoicePoint]" from medical to voting
> records.
>
> And ChoicePoint lied about that too. The company publicly denied
> they gave DNA to the Feds -- but then told our investigator,
> pretending to seek work, that ChoicePoint was "the number one"
> provider of DNA info to the FBI.
>
> "And that scares the hell out of me," said the executive (who has
> since left the company), because ChoicePoint gets it WRONG so often.
> We are not contracting out our Homeland Security to James Bond here.
> It's more like Austin Powers, Inc. Besides the 97% error rate in
> finding Florida "felons," Illinois State Police fired the company
> after discovering ChoicePoint had produced test "results" on rape
> case evidence ... that didn't exist. And ChoicePoint just got hit
> with the largest fine in Federal Trade Commission history for
> letting identity thieves purchase 145,000 credit card records.
>
> But it won't stop, despite Republican senators shedding big
> crocodile tears about "surveillance" of innocent Americans. That's
> because FEAR is a lucrative business -- not just for ChoicePoint,
> but for firms such as Syntech, Sybase and Lockheed-Martin -- each of
> which has provided lucrative posts or profits to connected
> Republicans including former Total Information Awareness chief John
> Poindexter (Syntech), Marvin Bush (Sybase) and Lynn Cheney (Lockheed-
> Martin).
>
> But how can they get Americans to give up our personal files, our
> phone logs, our DNA and our rights? Easy. Fear sells better than
> sex -- and they want you to be afraid. Back to today's New York
> Times, page 28: "Wider Use of DNA Lists is Urged in Fighting Crime."
> And who is providing the technology? It comes, says the Times, from
> the work done on using DNA fragments to identity victims of the
> September 11 attack. And who did that job (for $12 million, no bid)?
> ChoicePoint, Inc. Which is NOT mentioned by the Times.
>
> "Genetic surveillance would thus shift from the individual [the
> alleged criminal] to the family," says the Times -- which will
> require, of course, a national DNA database of NON-criminals.
>
> It doesn't end there. Turn to the same newspaper, page 23, with a
> story about a weird new law passed by the state of Georgia to fight
> illegal immigration. Every single employer and government agency
> will be required to match citizen or worker data against national
> databases to affirm citizenship. It won't stop illegal border
> crossing, but hey, someone's going to make big bucks on selling
> data. And guess what local boy owns the data mine? ChoicePoint,
> Inc., of Alpharetta, Georgia.
>
> The knuckleheads at the Times don't put the three stories together
> because the real players aren't in the press releases their
> reporters re-write.
>
> But that's the Fear Industry for you. You aren't safer from
> terrorists or criminals or "felon" voters. But the national wallet
> is several billion dollars lighter and the Bill of Rights is a
> couple amendments shorter.
>
> And that's their program. They get the data mine -- and we get the
> shaft.
> Greg Palast is author of Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama
> Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, The Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's
> Behind Left and Other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class
> War, out June 6. You can order it now.
> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13022.htm
>
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> Yahoo! Groups Links
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