Mother Davis feels the distinct shadow of government Googling upon her as she writes,
Remember the Total Information Awareness project? Total Information Awareness was a military project begun by Iran-Contra alumnus John Poindexter. Its goal was to gather as much information about American citizens into a gigantic database, giving the government the power to amass gigantic electronic files for every citizen, containing information about practically every aspect of their lives, including where they go, what they buy, when they get sick, who they talk to on the telephone, and on and on and on.
Well, the American people got pretty upset about the Total Information Awareness project, and rightly so. They complained to their members of Congress, and pretty soon the project got shut down – or so everybody thought. With a few minor changes, Total Information Awareness was resurrected under a new name, and has been in development ever since.
This week, we learn that one component of the larger Total Information Awareness agenda has so grossly violated the privacy of American citizens that Government Accountability Office has sent special communications to the Transportation Security Administration within the Department of Homeland Security to deal with the issues.
What are these privacy violations? Well, I don’t really know. That’s because the Government Accountability Office refuses to tell anyone anything specific outside the Bush Administration about the violations. However, the violations apparently have something to do with the Department of Homeland Security going far beyond authorized parameters for searching through American citizens’ airline flight records and private financial information. So, the Transportation Security Administration is charged with not disclosing its searches of private information, and the Government Accountability Office will not disclose what the Transportation Security Administration did not disclose. The irony smells like last week’s goulash.
Essentially, it appears that the Department of Homeland Security took airline databases of information about where and when Americans have been travelling, and combined them with databases from banks, home mortgage providers, and credit card companies. The result was to create a single gigantic database that contained information about Americans’ private movements and financial transactions, easily available within a few keystrokes to Homeland Security agents and politicians within the Republican government.
Hm. A gigantic government database containing information about Americans’ private lives, including where they go and what they buy… that sounds an awful lot like Total Information Awareness. Now that I know that database exists, I want to know just what the Bush Administration has been doing with the information it contains. Who has access to the files created on American citizens’ private lives? What are the plans for expanding the database?
The Bush Administration is refusing to provide answers to questions like these. They say the information is classified. The Bush Administration says that Total Information Awareness in its new and old incarnations is justified by the need for Homeland Security. The phrase “Homeland Security”, of course, does not appear once in the United States Constitution.
What does the United States Constitution have to say about searches of private information? The fourth amendment to the United States Constitution, passed as part of the Bill of Rights, reads:
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.
It seems that the Bush Administration thinks that Total Information Awareness is more important than the Bill of Rights. The new incarnation of the Total Information Awareness database is not based on probable cause, and operates without search warrants. A point, and a click, and the personal activity of millions of Americans is now an open book to the information. I call that an unreasonable search.
Reflecting on the value of cold hard cash and a nice slow walk,
Mother Davis
First let me direct this to the spooks at the Department of Homeland Security: F@#K U!. I have now secured a spot on the watch list.
Merriam-Webster: “Fas • cism: A political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.â€Â
U.S. democracy is dead.
And it’s really scary and rather depressing.
Doesn’t help that the media’s turned Americans against the left wing to the point where “liberal” is used as an insult.
Stupid, childish, and with a horrible planned look about it.
Paul, you just described
Liberalism as well.
Go read an encyclopedia, Hoosier, before you open your mouth again.
This move by the Bush administration is so clearly unconstitutional. And yet, there is no hue and cry against this among our mainstream politicians our in our mainstream media. How can this be? What can we do about it?
Every man and woman of good conscience should be sad and ashamed that the Constitution of the United States has been shredded in the name of security. We (liberals and conservatives) have forfeited the right to call ourselves free men and women.
“Any time we deny any citizen the full exercise of his constitutional rights, we are weakening our own claim to them.”
Dwight David Eisenhower, 1963
“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”
–Harry S. Truman
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
–Abraham Lincoln
Have we learned nothing from history? I don’t think so. I will fight to defend the Constitution of the US. It would be a disgrace to all who have sacrificed their all, to allow the American experiment to go down without a fight.
What happened to the founding fathers?
I mean, obviously they died, but how did people forget wise quotes like that?
It’s called distraction. Wait about an hour or so and see what you’re doing then. The media is the largest tool of distraction, including the internet, while cars and “work” also distract us for great periods of time. The powers that be have devised an ingenious plan, full of intrigue, jargon, Orwellian realities and chain-yanking the populace through “fear” or “terror-ism”. The left or progressive parties have been co-opted, as has the religious right and the media. With rigged “elections” against an opposition candidate that folded at the drop of a hat, buttressed by the prior set up of the Supreme Court to favor the Republican agenda (Where does it say in the Constitution, that the Judicial Branch decides rather than investigates the concerns of who will be president, when there are questions about a rigged election which are not even open to debate?), how is change to be effected?
Actually, it’s called “false consciousness”.
The ruling classes keep us distracted with silly things that make us think we have free will and so on whilst they get away with whatever they like.
I think Karl Marx’s views are a tad outdated, but it’s worrying how correct many of them seem to be sometimes.
HareTrinity, you are right on the mark. The American people have this tendency to feel REALLY scared and angry (a normal reaction) when attacked by surprise…and that’s exactly what happened on 9/11. What happens normally in these cases is the citizenry looks to it’s leadership…in WWII we had Roosevelt, on your side of the pond you had Churchill…both great men. Unfortunately, this time we had Dubya & Company. Needless to say, this does not begin to measure up to the needs of that particular moment. What I, and many others, saw after that was a cabal of very rich, ultra-conservative thugs hijacking our government and successfully waging a continuing propaganda campaign supporting their view until many otherwise intelligent people have bought into the Big Lie. What I see happening here is what I have seen, historically speaking, in every totalitarian government since I first read Orwell’s “1984″ many years ago. If YOU are worried, think about how WE feel… those of us that live here and are concious enough to see what’s happening to our country. But have faith..I live in an EXTREMELY conservative part of America, and I am seeing many of the Rednecks that are seeing through the bullshit..and that bodes ill for Dubya and his minions. Now, if we can regain control of Congress in ’06….
liberalism and democracy – both dead!
maybe that’s what hoosier is referring to. well, that would be one of hoosier’s most astute observations. of course, that leaves us with fascism and neo-conservitism flourishing. are we getting closer to nirvana now, hoosier?
Pardon, Randy, but I’m a liberal, and I’m not dead, and until I’m dead, I’ll make damn sure that liberal ideals are not dead.
Randy, there are a great group of folks out there in the hinterlands, both conservative and liberal that are NOT buying the bullshit any more. I speak with them every day. The latest polls have Dubya at the lowest ratings for a second-term President since Nixon, according to CBS news…and, personally, I regard Nixon as doing a better job than this current bunch. We’ve survived worse assholes than this, and we will again. “Illegitimi non Carborundum”. (“Don’t let the bastards grind you down”)
Well, good!
Having anti-Bush conservatives is going to be important to get people to open their eyes.
mike, i hope you are right. it seems like these clowns are not going away anytime soon and we don’ have anyone on the left that can stand up to the patrioic jive and lies and still manage to stay alive. anyone with information of the next J.F.K. or bobby or martin or paul or… tell them to head for the front lines
oh, yes, i was just having a little fun with hoosier. not being mean spirited or anything, i just sometimes wonder where nirvana lies in the minds of moderate republicans