[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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>

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[CanYoAssDigIt] Britney Spears' Constitutional Sedition

Britney Spears doesn't really appear in this article, I just put her
name in the Subject line because it's way more interesting that way.

impeachable, impeachable, impeachable, yadda yadda yadda.

we don't need at this stinking legal nitpicking.

All we need to do is ask ourselves WWSD - what would superman do?

Would he tap the phone lines of every single American, and catch the
bad guys and leave the good guys alone?

Of course he would.

So lets get back to American Idol and Extreme Home Makeover and stop
worrying about the government like Talking Heads said!

Right on!

May 15, 2006
General Hayden's Constitutional Sedition

Rewriting the Fourth Amendment

By DAVE LINDORFF

Bush's nominee for head of the CIA, Gen. Michael Hayden, at a press
conference, offered an interpretation of the Fourth Amendment to the
Constitution that removes the requirement of "probable cause" from
that important guarantee of freedom.

Asked by Jonathan Landay of Knight-Ridder about the Fourth Amendment's
standard of "probable cause" for issuance of a warrant for a police
search, Gen. Hayden disputed the standard.

"No, actually -- the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us
against unreasonable search and seizure." Hayden said, trying to
correct Landay.

"But it does say probable" Landay tried to interject.

"No, the amendment says unreasonable search and seizure," snapped Hayden.

Now the problem here is that the General, who was running the National
Security Agency as it has been operating a secret program, just
disclosed by USA Today, that monitors the phone calling records of
virtually all phone customers of AT&T, Bell South and Verizon, is
selectively quoting from the Fourth Amendment.

In fact, what the Fourth Amendment says is:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses,
papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall
not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,
supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the
place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The trick here is that under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA), the NSA is required to obtain a court warrant for any domestic
surveillance. What Bush has done is to authorize secret monitoring of
Americans communications without a warrant. At the same time, once he
was caught in the act, both Bush and Gen. Hayden have claimed that
they are following the same strict guidelines as if they were going to
court for a warrant.

Clearly, however, the standard for a warrant, as laid out by the
Founding Fathers, is "probably cause," not the much looser
"reasonable" that Hayden asserted to Landay at the press conference.

We Americans, and the members of Congress who are being asked to
consider Hayden's fitness to serve as CIA director, need to challenge
this spook's sleight of hand.

Clearly there is no "probable cause" for monitoring all the phone
records of the entire customer base of three of the nation's largest
phone service providers.

That's why Hayden tried so hard to deny that the standard for
monitoring people's communications is "probable cause."

The president and his subordinates have been found out violating the
Constitution in a serious way.

If this is not an impeachable act, I don't know what is.

Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the
Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of CounterPunch
columns titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common
Courage Press. Lindorff's new book, "The Case for Impeachment",
co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is due out May 1.

He can be reached at: dlindorff@yahoo.com

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