WashPost: "A company that provides e-mail service has the right to copy and read any message bound for its customers, a federal appeals court panel has ruled in a decision that could expand e-mail monitoring by businesses and the government. The 2-to-1 decision by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit in Massachusetts alarmed privacy advocates, who said it torpedoes any notion that e-mail enjoys the same protections as telephone conversations, or letters when they are sorted by mail carriers."

If you are caught committing any offense, including speeding, then your offense should be all the police need to run you in if they want. But now the Supreme Court says that even if you have done nothing wrong, you have no constitutional right to refuse to tell police your name. "The 5-4 decision frees the government to arrest and punish people who won't cooperate by revealing their identity. The decision, reached by a divided court, was a defeat for privacy rights advocates who argued that the government could use this power to force people who have done nothing wrong to submit to fingerprinting or divulge more personal information. The justices upheld a Nevada cattle rancher's misdemeanor conviction. He was arrested after he told a deputy that he didn't have to reveal his name or show an ID during an encounter on a rural road in 2000. "

"Without any public hearing or debate, Newsweek has learned, Defense officials recently slipped a provision into a bill before Congress that could vastly expand the Pentagon's ability to gather intelligence inside the United States, including recruiting citizens as informants... A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee says the provision would allow military intel agents to 'approach potential sources and collect personal information from them' without disclosing they work for the government."

Hakim Aziz is seldom hesitant about making radical pronouncements, but when two U.S. Secret Service agents showed up at his doorstep at 10:30 on the night of April 7, he was meek as a lamb. He'd just put his two daughters to bed, and his wife looked on as the two agents asked if they could search the house... According to Aziz, the agents said they'd decided to visit him after intercepting a particularly bitter e-mail he'd authored the day before... The agents told him they'd singled out his e-mail because he'd used the words "Bush" and "bin Laden" in the same sentence. It's a fairly Orwellian explanation, hinting at a bevy of federal computers whose sole task is to scrutinize e-mail word placement...

Welcome to America, 2004, where the actions of more than 150 million citizens are monitored 24/7 by the TIA, the Terrorist Information Awareness (originally called Total Information Awareness) program of DARPA, DHS and the Department of Justice...Six months of interviews with security consultants, former DARPA employees, privacy experts and contractors who worked on the TIA facility at 3701 Fairfax Drive in Arlington reveal a massive snooping operation that is capable of gathering â?? in real time â?? vast amounts of information on the day to day activities of ordinary Americans...â??We have a police state far beyond anything George Orwell imagined in his book 1984,â?쳌 says privacy expert Susan Morrissey. â??The everyday lives of virtually every American are under scrutiny 24-hours-a-day by the government.â?쳌

Capitol Hill Blue: "Despite Congressional action cutting funding, and the resignation of the program's controversial director, retired admiral John Poindexter, DARPA's Total Information Awareness program is alive and well and prying into the personal business of Americans 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 'When Congress cut the funding, the Pentagon -- with administration approval --simply moved the program into a 'black bag' account,' says a security consultant who worked on the DARPA project. 'Black bag programs don't require Congressional approval and are exempt from traditional oversight'...virtually every financial transaction of every American is now recorded and monitored by the federal government. Any bank transaction, all credit card charges plus phone records, credit reports, travel and even health records are captured in real time by the DARPA computers...TIA builds a profile of every American who has a bank account, uses credit cards and has a credit record."

Nine months after Congress shut down the Pentagon's controversial Total Information Awareness Program, the Bush regime is still combing through citizens' private records. The GAO has revealed that although the $54 million TIA program was officially "killed," government computers are still scanning a vast number of databases to trump up "evidence" of criminal or terrorist activity. With that kind of weird, random "bush beating, sending a $100 birthday check to a cousin in Kabul might be enough pretext to have an innocent civilian investigated. 36 of the government's 199 "data mining" operations are gathering personal info on private citizens. Several operations are obviously TIA-like. "I believe that Total Information Awareness is continuing under other names," says Peter Swire, the Clinton administration's top privacy official.

Bush just happened to sign an order on the Saturday of Saddam's capture -- snuck in under the euphoria and cover generated -- giving the FBI the power to probe any citizen's financial records, even if the feds don't suspect their involvement in crime or terrorism. The FBI doesn't have to demonstrate "probable cause" and the issued National Security Letters come with a gag order that prevents the probed individual from being notified that he is being investigated or that his records have been surrendered to the FBI.

"TSA is examining the use of RFID-tagged airline boarding passes that could allow passenger tracking within airports, a proposal some privacy advocates called a potentially 'outrageous' violation of civil liberties. Anthony 'Buzz' Cerino, communications security technology lead at the TSA, said the agency believes the use of boarding passes with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips could speed up the movement of passengers who sign on to the agency's 'registered traveler' program. This would permit them to pass through a secure 'special lane' during the boarding process. Under the registered traveler program, frequent fliers would provide the TSA with detailed personal information that would be correlated by a background check. Privacy advocates said they believe the RFID boarding pass would then serve as an automatic link to the registered traveler database."

"The Justice Department wants to significantly expand the government's ability to monitor online traffic, proposing that providers of high-speed Internet service should be forced to grant easier access for FBI wiretaps and other electronic surveillance, according to documents and government officials. A petition filed this week with the Federal Communications Commission also suggests that consumers should be required to foot the bill. ... the Center for Democracy & Technology, a public interest group, said the FBI is attempting to dictate how the Internet should be engineered to permit whatever level of surveillance law enforcement deems necessary."

"The Justice Department is dropping its effort to subpoena abortion records from six Planned Parenthood affiliates as part of the government's defense of a new law barring certain late-term abortions, officials said yesterday. Government lawyers said they were forced to withdraw the subpoenas because of US District Judge Phyllis Hamilton's ruling in San Francisco last week that the records could not be introduced in a challenge to the law brought by Planned Parenthood Federation of America." HOWEVER, "The Justice Department still is pursuing abortion records -- with names, addresses and other personal information edited out -- to defend the law against similar lawsuits brought by abortion providers in New York and Lincoln, Neb."

"The Pinellas school system is ready to approve a new technology that uses student fingerprints to keep track of who is riding school buses. Beginning in the fall, the fingerprint system would identify students as they board and leave. The goal is to ensure they are getting on the right bus and getting off at the right stop... Critics say programs of this nature raise significant privacy concerns and teach students at a young age to accept what amounts to a 'Big Brother' surveillance society. 'We are conditioning these children to understand that they have no personal space, no personal privacy,' said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Program on Technology and Liberty."

"Tax experts say Indian chartered accountants -- the subcontinent's version of certified professional accountants -- will prepare 150,000 to 200,000 returns this year, up from about 20,000 in 2003 and 1,000 in 2002. Critics say outsourcing short-shrifts U.S. accountants and exposes unwitting Americans to identity theft, which the FTC ranks as one of the country's fastest-growing crimes. On Thursday, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein urged major U.S. financial services and accounting firms to be cautious about outsourcing sensitive work such as tax preparation. 'I am gravely concerned that consumer data is being sent overseas without proper safeguards,' warns Feinstein.' The average accountant in India makes $250 to $300 per month, compared with $3,000 to $4,000 in the United States." Before you file a return ASK WHO IS DOING THE WORK. Don't take the risk, and don't support the corporate outsourcing agenda!

"In an attempt to bolster its defense of the unconstitutional Partial Birth Abortion Act of 2003, the Bush administration has gone beyond its campaign to destroy women's reproductive rights and has attacked the privacy rights of all Americans. This assault is being conducted through subpoenas the Justice Department has issued demanding that at least six hospitals in New York City, Philadelphia, Illinois and elsewhere turn over hundreds of patient records for certain abortions... It is... a flagrant example of why Congress and the attorney general have no business second-guessing sensitive medical decisions made by individuals and their doctors... We applaud those hospitals that are resisting Mr. Ashcroft's privacy invasion, and encourage them to stand firm until the legal proceedings run their course. Meanwhile, Americans should see Mr. Ashcroft's intimidating tactics for the dangerous threat to liberty and privacy they really are."

"A move by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to subpoena the medical records of 40 patients who received so-called partial-birth abortions at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago was halted--at least temporarily--when a Chicago federal judge quashed the information request. The ruling is the first in a series of subpoenas by the U.S. Justice Department seeking the medical records of patients from seven physicians and at least five hospitals, Crain's sister publication Modern Healthcare has learned. Besides Northwestern, Mr. Ashcroft is seeking patient records from University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers in Ann Arbor; Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia, owned by Tenet Healthcare Corp.; Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and Weill Cornell Medical Center of New York Presbyterian Hospital both of which are part of the New York-Presbyterian Healthcare System; and an unidentified San Francisco-area hospital."

"Chanting, placard-carrying demonstrators picketed the office of Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Astoria) Tuesday to protest legislation to permit the assigning of CIA agents to local police... The demonstrators representing The Campaign to Demilitarize the Police, carried signs that read 'Stop CIA Spying Before It Starts' and 'Stop HR 3439,' the title of the proposed bill that Maloney and Rep. Martin Frost (D-Texas) jointly introduced on Nov. 4... The bill is titled 'The JTTF (Joint Terrorism Task Force) Enhancement Act.'.. The proposed legislation seeks to amend the CIA Act of 1949 by allowing for deployment of CIA agents in local police departments and precincts and assigning local police to the Central Intelligence Agency. 'The CIA has a long history of violating international law as well as conducting illegal surveillance of lawful protest by Americans,' said Frank Morales, a spokesman for the group." Let Rep. Maloney know how you feel about HR 3439 - rep.carolyn.maloney@mail.house.gov

"A confidential federal informant claims an FBI agent instructed him to break the law as part of the government's terror investigations in Metro Detroit. In a Jan. 21 letter, written at the airport as he left for an undisclosed foreign country, informant Marwan Farhat said he was asked by FBI Special Agent Robert Pertuso to steal mail from Arab Muslims whom the federal government had identified as terror suspects. Farhat... claimed in a six-page letter to Pertuso that the FBI failed to deliver on a promise to give Farhat 25 percent of any money confiscated from the terror suspects. In his letter, Farhat said he received nothing... Farhat is at the center of an internal investigation by the U.S. Justice Department into the conduct of Richard G. Convertino, the lead prosecutor in the nation's first terror case to stem from the investigation of the September 11 terrorist attacks... Convertino is accused by his employer, the U.S. Attorney's Office, of a laundry list of offenses stemming."

"Northwest Airlines provided information on millions of passengers for a secret U.S. government air security project soon after the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks, raising fresh concerns among some privacy advocates about the airlines' use of confidential consumer data... The disclosure of Northwest's participation with NASA comes just four months after JetBlue's admission of involvement in a secret security project conducted by the Pentagon. The airline conceded that it violated its own privacy policy when it turned over records of 1.1 million passengers and the carrier is now being sued by passengers in class action lawsuits... Northwest's data sharing might also have implications in Europe, where European Union officials have balked at providing European passenger data to the TSA as part of the agency's computer passenger screening program, known as CAPPS II. The European Union has said that turning over passenger records to TSA for the CAPPS II program would violate EU privacy laws."

Declan McCullagh writes: "The FBI and the Justice Department have renewed their efforts to wiretap voice conversations carried across the Internet. The agencies have asked the Federal Communications Commission to order companies offering voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service to rewire their networks to guarantee police the ability to eavesdrop on subscribers' conversations... When weighing the FBI's request, the FCC will have to decide whether a 1994 law called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) applies to VoIP providers... 'The FCC should ignore pleas about national security and sophisticated criminals because sophisticated parties will use noncompliant VoIP, available open source and offshore,' said Jim Harper of Privacilla.org, a privacy advocacy Web site. 'CALEA for VoIP will only be good for busting small-time bookies, small-time potheads and other nincompoops.'"

From a WashPost editorial: "This year's intelligence authorization bill provided a little-noticed and dangerous expansion of a peculiar and unaccountable FBI investigative power. Last-minute efforts to modify the provision in conference committee failed, unfortunately, so the bureau now has more power to compel the production of certain business records in national security investigations, with no court oversight and in nearly total secrecy... The definition of 'financial institution' in the new law is expanded to include insurance companies, pawnbrokers, dealers in precious metals, the Postal Service, casinos, travel agencies and more. The FBI, on the authority of individual supervisory agents, can now get any of these businesses to disclose its dealings with anyone if the bureau deems those records relevant to counterterrorism. This is more unchecked power than the agency ought to have."

AP reports: "The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning. In a bulletin sent Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police organizations, the FBI said terrorists may use almanacs 'to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning.' It urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books are annotated in suspicious ways." What next? Encyclopedias? Car Maps? Street Atlases? The Guiness Book of World Records? Ripley's Believe It or Not?

Bob Barr writes: "Now, even my wife agrees that OnStar -- or similar tracking devices installed in non-GM vehicles -- would be a really bad idea. What changed her mind? In addition to the irrefutable eloquence of my arguments, it was a recent story, tucked away in an Internet news service, describing a recent federal court decision that confirms what my own conspiratorial-oriented mind always suspected was true. The FBI and other police agencies have been using these factory-installed tracking systems as a way to eavesdrop on passengers in vehicles, without the folks in the car even knowing the government was listening to their conversations!... [What's more,] Cell phones already will be required to have tracking devices installed therein, for the convenience of government employees who wish to track us and listen in on our cell phone conversations." Bob Barr is one of the most annoying Republicans, but we can't fault him for his strong advocacy of privacy and civil liberties.

"Yesterday, attorneys with the Partnership for Civil Justice and the National Lawyers Guild Mass Defense Committee filed a Freedom of Information Act Request (FOIA) with the FBI on behalf of the Act Now to Stop War & End Racism (A.N.S.W.E.R.) Coalition. The FOIA request follows media revelations of FBI domestic spying targeting the antiwar movement, and is part of the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition's Campaign to Defend the First Amendment. The FOIA request demands disclosure of documents related to FBI spying activities. It can be read in full at http://www.votenowar.org/pdf/foia.PDF. On Sunday, Nov. 23, a front-page New York Times story under the headline 'F.B.I. Scrutinizes Antiwar Rallies' cited an internal FBI memorandum circulated ten days prior to the Oct. 25 demonstrations that drew 100,000 in Washington D.C. and 20,000 in San Francisco... The memo urged law enforcement agencies to report on protest activities to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces."

On Dec 13 - THE DAY SADDAM WAS CAPTURED, H.R. 2417 was signed into law. In this attack on American civil liberties, John Ashcroft's power was extended to the collection of info on every possible financial record of an individual, from banks to travel agents to casinos to car dealers. The person does not even have to be officially under investigation! Just be a "person of interest." How could Congress let this happen? Are they so busy watching Bush's right hand they don't bother to notice that the left one is robbing America of its soul? Here's what some Congressfolk of conscience said against the bill.

"The FBI has implemented new ground rules that fundamentally alter the way investigators handle counterterrorism cases, allowing criminal and intelligence agents to work side by side and giving both broad access to the tools of intelligence gathering for the first time in decades. The result is that the FBI... will conduct many more searches and wiretaps that are subject to oversight by a secret intelligence court rather than regular criminal courts... Civil liberties groups and defense lawyers predict that more innocent people will be the targets of clandestine surveillance... 'By eliminating any distinction between criminal and intelligence classifications, it reduces the respect for the ordinary constitutional protections that people have,' said Joshua L. Dratel, a New York lawyer who has filed legal briefs opposing government anti-terrorism policies. 'It will result in a funneling of all cases into an intelligence mode. It's an end run around the Fourth Amendment.'"

From the ACLU: "The ability to speak freely and peacefully protest government policies is a cherished right, as enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. A confidential FBI memo leaked to the New York Times confirms however that the federal government is targeting innocent Americans engaged in nothing more than lawful protest and dissent. In the memo the FBI advocates spying on peaceful protesters and indicates that protesters who engage in civil disobedience or other disruptive acts should be treated like potential terrorists. It confirms that the government has monitored the actions of peaceful protesters and wants intelligence about protesters to be reported to the nearest FBI field office or terrorism task force... Take Action! Let Attorney General Ashcroft know that you support the First Amendment and oppose government surveillance of peaceful protests." Send a free Fax!

A St. Petersburg Times editorial: "When Attorney General John Ashcroft announced in May 2002 that he was lifting restrictions on domestic spying by the FBI - rules that had been put in place in response to the bureau's excesses during the 1960s and '70s - he promised the sweeping new powers would be used only 'for the purpose of detecting and preventing terrorism.' Now we know better. A classified FBI intelligence memorandum has recently come to light demonstrating that the FBI is using this new authority to spy on nonviolent antiwar demonstrators. Ashcroft seems to be ushering us back to the bad old days of J. Edgar Hoover... The parallels to Hoover's Cointelpro days, when civil rights leaders and anti-Vietnam protesters were put under surveillance and sabotaged, are too great to ignore. Ashcroft has exploited the nation's fears against terrorism - just as Hoover used the communist scare - to justify the elimination of most protections for citizen privacy."

Jim Lobe writes, "The [FBI memo on antiwar protests] described how protesters have sometimes used 'training camps' to rehearse 'tactics and counter-strategies for dealing with the police and to resolve any logistical issues.' It also noted their use of the Internet to raise money and 'coordinate their activities prior to demonstrations' -- all perfectly legal activities. It said protesters use 'innovative strategies,' like videotaping arrests as a means of 'intimidation' against local police, and that protesters may raise money to help pay for lawyers for those who are arrested... American University law professor Herman Schwartz told the Times that the memorandum and the operations behind it would very likely exercise a 'serious chilling effect on peaceful demonstration. If you go around telling people, 'We're going to ferret out information on demonstrations,' that deters people. People don't want their names and pictures in FBI files,' he said."

William Arkin writes: "Preoccupied with the war in Iraq and still traumatized by Sept. 11, 2001, the American public has paid little attention to some of what is being done inside the United States in the name of anti-terrorism. Under the banner of 'homeland security,' the military and intelligence communities are implementing far-reaching changes that blur the lines between terrorism and other kinds of crises and will break down long-established barriers to military action and surveillance within the U.S... New after 9/11 are more aggressive preparations and the presumption that local government will not be able to carry the new homeland security load. Being the military, moreover, contingency planners approach preparing by assuming the worst. All of this is a major -- and potentially dangerous -- departure from past policy."

NY Times reports: "A little-noticed measure approved by both the House and Senate would significantly expand the F.B.I.'s power to demand financial records, without a judge's approval, from car dealers, travel agents, pawnbrokers and many other businesses, officials said on Tuesday... Traditional financial institutions like banks and credit unions are frequently subject to administrative subpoenas from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to produce financial records in terrorism and espionage investigations. Such subpoenas, which are known as national security letters, do not require the bureau to seek a judge's approval before issuing them... 'This dramatically expands the government's authority to get private business records,' said Timothy H. Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. 'You buy a ring for your grandmother from a pawnbroker, and the record on that will now be considered a financial record that the government can get.'"

"Shoppers in a suburban Tulsa, Okla., Wal-Mart were unwitting guinea pigs earlier this year in a secret study that two of America's largest corporations never expected you'd know about. In the study, uncovered by the Chicago Sun-Times, shelves in a Wal-Mart in Broken Arrow, Okla., were equipped with hidden electronics to track the Max Factor Lipfinity lipstick containers stacked on them. The shelves and Webcam images were viewed 750 miles away by Procter & Gamble researchers in Cincinnati who could tell when lipsticks were removed from the shelves and could even watch consumers in action... Manufacturers and retailers are looking at ultimately putting the tiny chips into everything from soda cans and cereal boxes to shoes, clothing and car tires. This worries privacy-rights advocates who envision tags in shoes and other personal items being linked to credit-card information so that retailers and government agencies could spy on the public."

David Lazarus writes for the SF Chronicle: "Two of the three major credit-reporting agencies, each holding detailed files on about 220 million U.S. consumers, are in the process of outsourcing sensitive operations abroad, and a third may follow suit shortly, industry officials acknowledge for the first time. Privacy advocates say the outsourcing of files that include Social Security numbers and complete credit histories could lead to a surge in identity theft because U.S. laws cannot be enforced overseas. For their part, the credit agencies say the trend is a necessary cost- cutting move in light of new legislation that would allow all consumers to obtain free copies of their credit reports."

"The Senate is on the brink of making it easier for businesses to share private financial information submitted by customers. That would be a blow to consumer rights. The measure being considered is a renewal of the Fair Credit Reporting Act... This is a dark and unmapped universe in which banks, credit card companies and insurers have free rein to share detailed records among thousands of affiliates, with customers largely powerless and unknowing. Bank balances, buying habits, investment profiles and more can be tapped into in ways that invite fraud, marketing assaults, identity theft and unfair credit decisions. It is no coincidence that [bill], propelled onward by heavy lobbying by the financial industry, would pre-empt a worthy law just passed in California that finally gives consumers power to limit the sharing to necessary questions."

From TalkLeft: "Last April, we wrote about Choice Point, a company hired by the U.S. to collect data on hundreds of millions of citizens of Latin American countries... The Miami Herald has new details: 'Prosecutors in Nicaragua, Mexico and elsewhere across Latin America have opened investigations into the business of private information mining after discovering that the U.S. Justice Dept hired [Choice Point] to collect personal information on up to 300mn people throughout the region without their knowledge... The...project has stirred concerns about the U.S. acting as 'Big Brother' and interfering in the affairs of countries that pose little threat. Officials in Nicaragua worry it could fuel a black market in private information in nations already plagued by corruption and lacking official oversight to prevent abuses... Other clients [involved in this project] are media organizations, including the Chicago Tribune.'" ChoicePoint was the firm used by Katherine Harris to purge voters.

AP reports: "While privacy worries are frustrating the Pentagon's plans for a far-reaching database to combat terrorism, a similar project is quietly taking shape with the participation of more than a dozen states -- and $12 million in federal funds. The database project, created so states and local authorities can track would-be terrorists as well as criminal fugitives, is being built and housed in the offices of a private company but will be open to some federal law enforcers and perhaps even US intelligence agencies [including the CIA]. Dubbed Matrix, the database has been in use for a year and a half in Florida, where police praise the crime-fighting tool as nimble and exhaustive... [Privacy advocates] say that Matrix houses restricted police and government files on colossal databases that sit in the offices of Seisint Inc., a Boca Raton, Fla., company founded by a millionaire who police say flew planeloads of drugs into the country in the early 1980s."

House and Senate negotiators have decided to close [the Total Information Awareness program, which the Busheviks renamed 'Terrorism Information Awareness'] that was developing a vast computerized terrorism surveillance system and bar spending that would allow those high-tech spying tools to be used against Americans on U.S. soil. But they left open the possibility that some or all of the high-powered software tools under development might be employed by different government offices to gather foreign intelligence from foreigners, U.S. citizens aboard or foreigners in this country... Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), who has led a campaign against the program, hailed the result. "Americans on American soil are not going to be targets of TIA surveillance that would have violated their privacy and civil liberties. The government is not going to be able to pick Americans up by their ankles and shake them to see if anything funny falls out." But read the fine print - this vampire may never die.

Reuters reports: "Big Brother technology that already allows people to be tracked through their mobile phones could soon be installed in household objects, tipping off police if they are stolen. TVs, DVD players and computers could be fitted with microchips identifying their location and their normal proximity to each other, automatically alerting police if they change unexpectedly, according to a scientist on Wednesday. Professor Nigel Linge said a police-monitored pilot project testing the hybrid wireless and mobile phone technology should be up and running within six months.... Linge said there were even talks about installing global positioning technology in cars that could regulate speed remotely.... Linge said he was well aware of the potential implication for civil liberties of the intrusive potential of the new technology, but at present he was focusing only on the technical aspects." Prof. Linge is 'well aware,' ladies and gents. We can all rest safely now.

"According to a statement issued by Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, opponents will protest the launch of the Electronic Product Code network during a Sept. 16 symposium.... Currently, all products are identified by the Universal Product Code, which is commonly referred to as 'bar coding.' But industry and manufacturing leaders want to adopt the EPC network, which involves embedding computer chips that emit radio signals inside products. The signals, which can be picked up by 'readers' at varied distances, will alert in-store and warehouse managers to current stock levels, streamlining product management while aiding in the prevention of theft. But opponents of the technology say the so-called 'spy chips' could also be misused by industry and government to not only identify products but also consumers who buy them. By incorporating Radio Frequency Identification technology within the EPC network, corporations can identify shoppers as well as products."

"Drivers were reeling last night at Government plans to put a computerised spy in every car. The hi-tech gadgets will record each time a motorist drifts over a speed limit, Wanders into a bus lane or even STOPS on a yellow line. And it means the Government will hit Britain's hard-pressed motorists with even more fines -- and bring extra millions flooding into the Treasury. The proposed scheme is guaranteed to cause outrage among Britain's 38million drivers. Last night Tory Shadow Trade Secretary Tim Yeo said the implications of the plan were nightmarish -- adding: 'It risks turning every motorist, however safe a driver, into a criminal. It is far too draconian'... The Big Brother-style system, called Electronic Vehicle Identification, is outlined in an 85-page dossier. It was drawn up by the Association of Chief Police Officers on the orders of Transport Secretary Alistair Darling... 'It's disturbing to think the Government would be able to track people's movements around the clock.'"

"Michelin, which manufactures 800,000 tires a day, is going to insert RFID tags into its tires. The tag will store a unique number for each tire, a number that will be associated with the car's VIN (Vehicle Identification Number). Good for Michelin, and car manufacturers, and fighting crime. Potentially bad for you. Who will assure your privacy? Do you really want your car's tires broadcasting your every move? ... The European Central Bank may embed RFID chips in the euro note.... Unfortunately, such a move makes it possible for governments to track the passage of cash from individual to individual. Cash is the last truly anonymous way to buy and sell. With RFID tags, that anonymity would be gone. ... Several major manufacturers and retailers expect RFID tags to aid in managing the supply chain, from manufacturing to shipping to stocking store shelves, including Home Depot, The Gap, Proctor & Gamble, Prada, Target, Tesco (a United Kingdom chain), and Wal-Mart."

AP reports: "Tampa police have scrapped their controversial security camera system that scanned city streets for criminals, citing its failure over two years to recognize anyone wanted by authorities. The system was intended to recognize the facial characteristics of felons, sexual predators and runaway children by matching passers-by in Ybor City with a database of 30,000 mug shots. 'It's just proven not to have any benefit to us,' Capt. Bob Guidara, a department spokesman, said Tuesday. The cameras have led only to arrests for such crimes as drug deals... 'It's a relief,' said Darlene Williams, chairwoman of the Greater Tampa Chapter of the ACLU. 'Any time you have this sort of technology on public streets, you are subjecting people who come to Ybor to an electronic police lineup, without any kind of probable cause.'" This is just a beginning -- we need to drive Big Brother out of our Country --for good! Stop the Patriot Act! Stop Ashcroft! Defeat Bush!

By Declan McCullagh: "Internet telephone calls are fast becoming a national security threat that must be countered with new police wiretap rules, according to an FBI proposal presented quietly this month.... the FBI's Electronic Surveillance Technology Section have met at least twice in the past three weeks with senior officials of the FCC to lobby for proposed new Internet eavesdropping rules. The FBI-drafted plan seeks to force broadband providers to provide more efficient, standardized surveillance facilities... According to the proposal that the FCC is considering, any company offering cable modem or DSL service... would be required to comply with a thicket of federal regulations that would establish a central hub for police surveillance of their customers. The proposal has alarmed civil libertarians who fear that it might jeopardize privacy and warn that the existence of such hubs could facilitate broad surveillance of... e-mail, Web browsing and instant messaging."

NCC Privacy Group report: "Next week, a special commission... will present a final report on 'articulating a proposed vision for the future of the US Postal Service.' That vision includes the idea that no person should be able to mail a letter without the USPS and their pals in Homeland Security knowing about it...the Final Report of the resident's Commission on the USPS will include the Final Recommendations of a number of Subcommittees, including this gem: ...a more secure system could be built using sender identified mail. The Subcommittee recommends that the Postal Service, in coordination with the Dept. of Fatherland Security, explore the use of sender identification for every piece of mail, commercial and retail...among other recommendations of the Commission is the maintenance of the monopoly on first-class mail... together, those two key recommendations mean that this special Commission is pushing for the legal abolishment of the right to correspond anonymously."

From Fox News: "Think of it as a 200-foot-long eye in the sky. The Office of Naval Research is working with Honolulu-based Science & Technology International to develop the idea. From thousands of feet up, STI's advanced optical sensor system can spot targets on the ground or deep under water and then track their movements, said Stephen Huett, ONR's project manager for the program... 'What is increasingly happening is people are coming under routine surveillance without good cause,' said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union (search). 'It's no longer fanciful to talk about a '1984'-like society.' An intelligence policy specialist at the Federation of American Scientists, Steven Aftergood, said, 'People are going to behave differently even in their own back yards if they know that someone may be watching.'"

Greg Palast interviewed: "It's De Ja Vu all over again, I can't believe it. My good friend Hank Asher is back with another alias...For those who read my book or Michael Moore's, Database Technologies, his old company, came up with the list now up to 97,000 names of supposed felons in Florida who are scrubbed off the voter roles before the 2000 election, it turns out almost every name on that list was an innocent person, they were named as felons by this company, by Hank Asher's company, they weren't felons, they lost their vote and, surprise, most of them were African Americans. And that fixed our election. Hank is back. Now Hank was thrown off the board of the company he founded by the U.S. Drug enforcement agency. Because of his connections to Bahamian drug dealers...he is back with a different costume on...up to the same tricks...of course first thing he's doing is jumping on the 911 war on terror bandwagon to see if he can suck a few bucks out that have one, too."

Iran-Contra criminal "John M. Poindexter took issue... with critics of his Pentagon efforts to develop new data scanning systems and an online futures market for flushing out terrorists and predicting Middle East developments, saying the programs had fallen victim to ignorance, distortion and Washington's 'highly-charged political environment'... Poindexter's intention to resign his post as head of the Pentagon's Office of Information Awareness [was reported] two weeks ago. The news followed Poindexter's involvement in an ill-fated plan to launch an online futures market for betting on Middle Eastern developments that was advertised as a vehicle for profiting on assassinations and other terrorist acts. For months before that, he had been embroiled in another controversy over a computerized surveillance plan to scour travel, financial, medical and other databases to penetrate terrorist networks." Let's hope that Bush's Big Brother plans follow Poindexter out the door.

"Police in Florida are creating a counterterrorism database designed to give law enforcement agencies around the country a powerful new tool to analyze billions of records about both criminals and ordinary Americans... [The system] dubbed Matrix, enables investigators to find patterns and links among people and events faster than ever before, combining police records with commercially available collections of personal information about most American adults... Some civil liberties groups fear Matrix will dramatically lower the threshold for government snooping because other systems don't allow searches of criminal and commercial records with such ease or speed... A senior official overseeing the project acknowledged it could be intrusive and pledged to use it with restraint. 'It's scary. It could be abused. I mean, I can call up everything about you, your pictures and pictures of your neighbors,' said Phil Ramer... 'Our biggest problem now is everybody who hears about it wants it.'"

Robert Dreyfuss writes: "If the Federal Bureau of Investigation is spending a lot of money tracking terrorists, not much of it is being squandered on frills, judging from the looks of the FBI's ramshackle field office in the federal building high above Chicago's Loop... But the modest appearance is deceiving... the task force is the business end of an ambitious anti-terrorist and domestic spying apparatus that is rapidly being assembled by the federal government... Authorities can now more easily gain access to phone and email logs, travel information, credit files, library records, and reams of other personal data. [Under] the 2001 Patriot Act and an order by Attorney General John Ashcroft easing restrictions on FBI investigations, they can find out which websites people visit and which classes they're taking, infiltrate political meetings and worship services, tap phone lines, monitor postings in online chat rooms, even secretly search homes and businesses."

Australian IT reports: "US senators debating defence spending for next year have proposed eliminating all funding for the Pentagon's vast computerised terrorism surveillance program that has raised privacy concerns. In the past, the US Congress has limited the Defence Department's ability to implement the system - now known as Terrorism Information Awareness - while allowing research to proceed, but the new provision goes further, banning funding outright... The program is being developed and tested under the supervision of controversial retired Admiral John Poindexter [an Iran-Contra criminal]. Its administration has sent the US Congress an analysis of the proposed defence bill that said the provision would 'deny an important potential tool in the war on terrorism'... Admiral Poindexter's plan is to develop computer software that can scan vast public and private databases of commercial transactions and personal data around the world to provide advance warning of terrorist attacks."

The Village Voice reports: "The cameras are already in place. The computer code is being developed at a dozen or more major companies and universities. And the trial runs have already been planned. Everything is set for a new Pentagon program to become perhaps the federal government's widest reaching, most invasive mechanism yet for keeping us all under watch. Not in the far-off, dystopian future. But here, and soon. The military is scheduled to issue contracts for Combat Zones That See, or CTS, as early as September. The first demonstration should take place before next summer, according to a spokesperson. Approach a checkpoint at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, during the test and CTS will spot you. Turn the wheel on this sprawling, 8,656-acre army encampment, and CTS will record your action. Your face and license plate will likely be matched to those on terrorist watch lists. Make a move considered suspicious, and CTS will instantly report you to the authorities."

"Researchers at the MIT Media Lab unveiled the Government Information Awareness, or GIA, website Friday. Using applications developed at the Media Lab, GIA collects and collates information about government programs, plans and politicians from the general public and numerous online sources. Currently the database contains information on more than 3,000 public figures. The premise of GIA is that if the government has a right to know personal details about citizens, then citizens have a right to similar information about the government. GIA was inspired by the federal government's Terrorist Information Awareness, or TIA, program. Government officials have said that TIA's sole purpose is to identify potential terrorists by comparing information in a broad range of databases that might point to patterns indicative of terrorist activity. But many privacy advocates see TIA as an overly intrusive effort to monitor Americans' lives in minute detail, from credit card purchases to travel plans."

From The Register: "Right now, you can buy a hammer, a pair of jeans, or a razor blade with anonymity. With RFID tags, that may be a thing of the past. Some manufacturers are planning to tag just the packaging, but others will also tag their products. There is no law requiring a label indicating that an RFID chip is in a product... But RFID transponders are, in many cases, forever part of the product, and designed to respond when they receive a signal. Imagine everything you own is 'numbered, identified, catalogued, and tracked.' Anonymity and privacy? Gone in a hailstorm of invisible communication, betrayed by your very property... Others are talking about placing RFID tags into all sensitive or important documents: 'it will be practical to put them not only in paper money, but in drivers' licenses, passports, stock certificates... Applied Digital Solutions has designed an RFID tag - called the VeriChip - for people. Only 11 mm long, it is designed to go under the skin."

AP reports: "The Pentagon is developing an urban surveillance system that would use computers and thousands of cameras to track, record and analyze the movement of every vehicle in a foreign city. Dubbed 'Combat Zones That See,' the project is designed to help the U.S. military protect troops and fight in cities overseas. Police, scientists and privacy experts say the unclassified technology could easily be adapted to spy on Americans. The project's centerpiece is groundbreaking computer software that is capable of automatically identifying vehicles by size, color, shape and license tag, or drivers and passengers by face... The project is being overseen by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency... Its other projects include... creating a computerized diary that would record and analyze everything a person says, sees, hears, reads or touches... DARPA told the contractors that 40 million cameras already are in use around the world, with 300 million expected by 2005."

"Under the guise of ... Bush's all-consuming, yet amorphous, war against terrorism, police agencies across the country are spying and compiling dossiers on citizens exercising their constitutional rights. The Bush administration... has consistently supported policies and legislation allowing for the collection and cataloguing of data on the political, religious, or social views of individuals and organizations regardless of whether they present any imminent threat to the nation's safety. The administration has also spent obscene amounts of money to spy on its citizens while money for education and social services is drying up... As Geov Parrish reported in these pages earlier this week, 'the Global Intelligence Working Group (GIWG), a committee charged with advising Congress on intelligence sharing, presented a first draft of a plan to create a uniform set of intelligence standards that would cover all types and levels of U.S. law enforcement.'"

Holy Orwell! "Akron students will be fingerprinted beginning this fall to identify them in school lunch lines... school board members voted 5-2 Tuesday to spend $700,000 on a controversial, modernized cafeteria system. Board members Rebecca Heimbaugh and Mary Stormer voted 'no,' mirroring the concerns of parents about the cost and privacy issue involved with fingerprinting students. 'I do not believe that any parent or any student has ever had the expectation that in order to go through the lunch line or to buy a cookie or carton of milk that they or their children would be requested to first be fingerprinted,' said Heimbaugh, who says she will probably refuse to have her three children in the Akron schools fingerprinted... Students' fingerprints will be put into a scanner that will make a template of binary numbers corresponding with the unique swirls and arches of each print. When students go through the lunch line, they will place their finger on a scanner that will identify them."

"The report, which is due Tuesday, must outline the project's privacy implications and detail the scope of the system intended to catch terrorists by combing through Americans' travel records and credit card purchases. In January, the Senate unanimously approved a spending bill amendment which ordered the Pentagon, the CIA and the Justice Department to report on the project to Congress. Failure to do so would cost the program its future funding. The amendment, [was] introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden [who] warned the Senate... not to attempt to undo the oversight requirements. 'The TIA technology will give the federal government the capability to operate the most massive domestic surveillance program in the history of our country,' putting the financial, medical and other details of Americans' private lives in the hands of tens of thousands of bureaucrats, he said. 'The American people have the right to know if the federal government intends to deploy this technology against them.'"

From Wired.com: "The Pentagon is about to embark on a stunningly ambitious research project designed to gather every conceivable bit of information about a person's life, index all the information and make it searchable. What national security experts and civil libertarians want to know is, why would the Defense Department want to do such a thing? The embryonic LifeLog program would dump everything an individual does into a giant database: every e-mail sent or received, every picture taken, every Web page surfed, every phone call made, every TV show watched, every magazine read... a GPS transmitter to keep tabs on where that person went, audio-visual sensors to capture what he or she sees or says, and biomedical monitors to keep track of the individual's health. This... could then be used to 'trace the 'threads' of an individual's life,' to see exactly how a relationship or events developed, according to a briefing from the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency."

"The Pentagon is developing a radar-based device that can identify people by the way they walk, for use in a new antiterrorist surveillance system... the individual 'gait signatures' of people could become part of the data to be linked together in a vast surveillance system the Pentagon agency calls Total Information Awareness... DARPA declared, 'The amounts of data that will need to be stored and accessed will be unprecedented, measured in petabytes.' One petabyte would dwarf most existing databases; it's roughly equal to 50 times the Library of Congress, which holds more than 18 million books. Conceived and managed by retired Adm. John Poindexter [an Iran-Contra criminal], the TIA surveillance system [would] draw conclusions and predictions about terrorists [or anyone] from databases that record such transactions as passport applications, visas, work permits, driver's licenses, car rentals, airline ticket purchases, arrests or reports of suspicious activities."

Farhad Manjoo writes for Salon.com: "Predictive says that it has gone to great lengths to protect the data its software collects about people; the company uses no personally identifiable information, so your name is never tied to your profile. But the company's software is indicative of a trend in the TV world, one toward ever-more 'targeted' advertising that relies on gaining more and more knowledge about TV viewers. The TVs and TV accessories currently being sold to Americans -- digital video recorders, set-top boxes, etc. -- can now be equipped with software to monitor how we watch those pictures and to report back to advertisers. Soon, companies will be marketing cars, soap, insurance and beer by addressing each American's innermost wants and needs -- do you like great taste, or less filling? -- right in our living rooms, on our trusty old TVs."

AP reports: "Police raided the offices of two Nicaraguan businesses accused of selling government files to a U.S. data-gathering company, and discovered one of them had a database containing federal voting records, authorities said Friday. Also Friday, the U.S. data vendor, ChoicePoint Inc. said it was preparing a response to an inquiry from Mexico's federal elections agency. The e-mailed request asked ChoicePoint to identify Mexican companies hired to purchase a database of Mexicans' personal details." ChoicePoint was the firm hired by Jeb and Katherine Harris to purge the voter rolls of likely Gore voters in Florida -- by misidentifying minorities as felons.

CBS News reports: "A proposal to give the CIA and Department of Defense much broader powers in gathering intelligence on American citizens reportedly was defeated in a closed-door session on Capitol Hill Thursday. The New York Times reports the proposal, backed by the Bush administration and leading Senate Republicans, was part of a broader intelligence funding bill now pending before Congress... Sources told The Times that California Democrat Dianne Feinstein and others were successful in getting the provision removed from the authorization bill, but the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, indicated that he wants to hold further hearings on the idea... Democrats and civil liberties advocates say the FBI is subject to guidelines and judicial oversight that would not apply to the CIA and Department of Defense."

Maxine Bernstein writes for the Oregonian: "Portland police may soon be asking for more than a license when making a traffic stop, but also requesting a motorist to stick out a thumb and forefinger. Next month, more than a dozen officers will carry handheld devices on the street that will allow them to instantly verify a person's identity by analyzing their fingerprints. The Portland Police Bureau was awarded a $250,000 federal COPS grant to equip each of its five precincts with a device and distribute another 10 to investigative officers in the detective, gang enforcement, drugs and vice, and tactical operations divisions. The Minnesota-based Identix manufactures the technology, which captures fingerprints at the scene and remotely transmits them to a database. The Portland police will run the prints against the FBI's automated fingerprint database, and a database of seven Western states, known as the Western Identification Network."

"Denver police will no longer photograph, record license plate numbers or intercept e-mail of peaceful demonstrators, under terms of a settlement reached on Thursday between the city and the ACLU. The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Colorado sued the city in 2002 on behalf of groups and individuals that included the American Friends Service Committee, an 85 year-old pacifist Quaker group, and a 73-year-old Franciscan nun. Some of the people in what have been dubbed the 'spy files' were falsely labeled as 'criminal extremists.' In the settlement, which must be approved by U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham, the intelligence unit would be limited to gathering information about serious criminal activity and not on people who are suspected of nonviolent civil disobedience that amounts to a misdemeanor...ACLU Legal Director Mark Silverstein said in a statement. 'As this agreement demonstrates, effective law enforcement does not require giving up our constitutional rights.'"

"'As a public official, I appreciate and commend those trying to protect our nation against terrorist attacks,' the letter from a municipal employee of Bothell, Wash., begins. 'I also have concerns, specifically regarding the treatment of those who have been identified as potential risks. It has become apparent, over the course of my last few trips, that I am one of those individuals.' Put yourself in the shoes of this man, who wrote to his local congressman, Representative Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), last year. The man's listing as a possible security threat is a mistake. Yet every time he flies, he has to arrive at the airport three-and-a-half hours early to ensure enough time for the inevitable thorough search of his baggage... The documents, obtained by [the] Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) under the Freedom of Information Act, recount case after case of innocent travelers who are on the terrorist watch lists, yet have no way to remove themselves."

"'The Justice Dept. lifted a requirement that the FBI ensure the accuracy and timeliness of information about criminals and crime victims before adding it to the country's most comprehensive law enforcement database. The system, run by the FBI's NCIC, includes data about terrorists, fugitives, warrants, people missing, gang members and stolen vehicles, guns or boats. Records are queried increasingly by the nation's law enforcement agencies to help decide whether to monitor, detain or arrest someone. The records are inaccessible to the public, and police have been prosecuted in U.S. courts for misusing the system to find, for example, personal information about girlfriends or former spouses. Officials said the change, which immediately drew criticism from civil-liberties advocates, is necessary to ensure investigators have access to information that can't be confirmed but could take on new significance later'" - yeah, after they've locked you away for life on bogus charges...

"A New Jersey resident who lives part-time in Vero Beach, Fla., she often finds herself in airports. And every time she does, she gets searched. They pull her aside, open her luggage and rifle through. After it had happened five consecutive times since Sept. 11, Abodeely turned to her husband and said, 'I think I'm being profiled.' Abodeely decided to find out. She contacted the Transportation Security Administration in Washington. Yes, she was told, she is on a federal law enforcement list. No, they couldn't say why. Armed with the will of the wronged, Abodeely, a second-generation Lebanese-American, has been trying for six months to get off this list. She has called the TSA close to a dozen times, contacted her local FBI office, Continental Airlines and her congressman. None of these contacts yielded any information on how she got on a suspicious-persons list or how to get off. All they have given her is a royal runaround."

From New York Law Journal: "A federal judge... approved the police department's proposed guidelines for the surveillance of political groups, likely ending a five-month conflict between city police and civil liberties attorneys. The guidelines were drafted at the request of U.S. District Judge Charles S. Haight Jr., who last month agreed that an 18-year-old consent decree that limited the New York City Police Department's ability to investigate political groups was outdated in light of terrorism threats... Under the new rules, the department will no longer need to obtain specific information of criminal activity before investigating a political group. In addition, officers will not have to ask permission of a three-member panel, known as the Handschu Authority, before beginning investigations."

"The states of MA,TX, SC, FL, GA, AK, CO, & TN are preparing to consider bills that apparently are intended to extend the national Digital Millennium Copyright Act...bills would flatly ban the possession, sale, or use of technologies that 'conceal from a communication service provider...' Your ISP is a communication service provider, so anything that concealed the origin or destination of any communication from your ISP would be illegal - with no exceptions. If you send or receive your email via an encrypted connection, you're in violation, because the 'To' and 'From' lines of the emails are concealed from your ISP by encryption...Worse yet, Network Address Translation (NAT), a technology widely used for enterprise security, operates by translating the 'from' and 'to' fields of Internet packets, thereby concealing the source or destination of each packet, and hence violating these bills. Most security 'firewalls' use NAT, so if you use a firewall, you're in violation."

PentaPost reports, "Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Justice Department and FBI have dramatically increased the use of two little-known powers that allow authorities to tap telephones, seize bank and telephone records and obtain other information in counterterrorism investigations with no immediate court oversight, according to officials and newly disclosed documents. The FBI, for example, has issued scores of 'national security letters' that require businesses to turn over electronic records about finances, telephone calls, e-mail and other personal information. The letters, a type of administrative subpoena, may be issued independently by FBI field offices and are not subject to judicial review unless a case comes to court, officials said. John Ashcroft has also personally signed more than 170 'emergency foreign intelligence warrants,' three times the number authorized in the preceding 23 years, according to recent congressional testimony."

Massachusetts' "Coolidge Bridge is just one of thousands of locations around the planet where citizens are crossing — willingly, more often than not - into a world of networked, highly computerized surveillance. According to a January report by J.P. Freeman, a security market-research firm in Newtown, CT, 26 million surveillance cameras have already been installed worldwide, and more than 11 million of them are in the United States... But astonishingly, other, nonvideo forms of monitoring will increase even faster. In a process that mirrors the unplanned growth of the Internet itself, thousands of personal, commercial, medical, police, and government databases and monitoring systems will intersect and entwine. Ultimately, surveillance will become so ubiquitous, networked, and searchable that unmonitored public space will effectively cease to exist." So write Dan Farmer and Charles C. Mann for MIT's Technology Review.

"Benetton last week said it would begin inserting tiny radio frequency identification chips, or RFIDs, into some of its clothing products. These chips will let the company track a particular sweater or skirt from the factory floor to the shelf of the store... Gillette Co. is doing the same with personal grooming items such as Mach 3 Turbo razors. The company recently signed a contract for a half-billion RFID chips, to be provided by the delightfully named Alien Technology Corp. of California... [Katherine] Albrecht fears that readers will be installed everywhere and connected to databases filled with personal information. Imagine a video screen on a grocery cart, beaming customized ads at you, because it recognized the RFID chip in your shoe. Albrecht even worries that retailers will persuade consumers to install RFID readers in their homes, in exchange for price discounts. Then they'll be able to track your consumption patterns down to the last bottle of milk."

AP reports, "The FBI has a fleet of aircraft, some equipped with night surveillance and eavesdropping equipment, flying America's skies to track and collect intelligence on suspected terrorists and other criminals [and anyone Bushcroft doesn't like]. The FBI will not provide exact figures on the planes and helicopters, but more than 80 are in the skies. There are several planes, known as 'Nightstalkers,' equipped with infrared devices that allow agents to track people and vehicles in the dark. Other aircraft are outfitted with electronic surveillance equipment so agents can pursue listening devices placed in cars, in buildings and even along streets, or listen to cell phone calls... Critics say the surveillance technology further blurs the boundaries on domestic spying. They point to a 2001 case in which the Supreme Court found police had engaged in an unreasonable search by using thermal imaging equipment to detect heat lamps used to grow marijuana plants indoors."

"The Justice Department has stepped up use of a secretive process that enables the attorney general to authorize electronic surveillance and physical searches of suspected terrorists, spies and other national-security threats without immediate court oversight. Attorney General John Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that he had authorized more than 170 such 'emergency' searches since the 9/11 attacks - more than triple the 47 emergency searches that have been authorized by other attorneys general in the past 20 years."

BoycottDelta.com writes, "Starting later this month, Delta passengers will be asked a lot more than 'window or aisle', or whether you want that 'special meal'. Delta wants to know more: a lot more. As a pilot test of a new Orwellian airline 'security' program, Delta will be running background checks on anyone who flies Delta from one of three as-yet undisclosed airports. What will Delta do? Run a credit check on you; Investigate your banking history; Run a criminal background check. You will then be assigned your own Threat Assessment Color Greens will pass through security as normal. Yellows would require additional screening. Reds are not allowed to fly. How will they determine what color you are? No one knows. Does a bad credit rating make you a terrorist? No one knows. Will an unpaid parking ticket flag you 'red'? No one knows."

"The U.S. Defense Department has awarded millions of dollars to more than two-dozen research projects that involve a controversial data-mining project aimed at compiling electronic dossiers on Americans. Nearly 200 corporations and universities submitted proposals to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, according to government documents brought to light by a privacy group Thursday. John Poindexter, who oversees the agency's Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, approved 26 of them last fall, including grants to the University of Southern California, the Palo Alto Research Center, and defense contractor Science Applications International."

"Senators from both parties are accusing the FBI of excessive secrecy and demanding details of how federal agents use antiterrorist laws to spy on people's Internet activity. The Domestic Surveillance Oversight Act is called 'the first comprehensive, public FBI oversight effort in decades' by cosponsor Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont. He is teaming with Rep. Senators Grassley of IA and Specter of PA to force greater accountability by investigative agencies... new legislation requires FBI and DoJ agents to tell how often they spy on US citizens, under powers granted by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and expanded in the Patriot Act 'Before we give the government more power to conduct surveillance on its own citizens, we must look at how it is using the power that it already has,' says Leahy. 'Is that power being used effectively, so that our citizens not only feel safer but are in fact safer? Is that power being used appropriately, so that our liberties are not sacrificed?'"

Robert O'Harrow Jr writes: "The Transportation Security Administration has hired Lockheed Martin Corp. to build the backbone of a vast electronic passenger-screening network to assess the background and potential threat of everyone who makes a reservation to fly...The system, known as CAPPS II (Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II), will rely heavily on commercial data warehouses containing names, telephone numbers, former addresses, financial details [including credit histories] and other information about virtually every adult American. It will rate passengers using a color code: red for immediate threats, yellow for people with questionable backgrounds and green for the vast majority. The rating will be given to the airlines for decisions on whether a passenger should be allowed to board or be subjected to additional questioning...'Those who are falsely accused by this system are going to carry around this scarlet letter,' [the ACLU's Barry] Steinhardt said."

Mary Lou Pickel writes: "Each passenger will have to give full name, address, phone number and date of birth at the time of booking...In the coming weeks, Lockheed will begin working with International Business Machines Corp., Delta Air Lines and other companies to create a model program and test the classified data network...The TSA screening program will subject travelers to unconstitutional 'searches' without probable cause, said Mihir Kshirsagar, a policy analyst with the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington...Opponents of the procedure say profiling will invade privacy without necessarily enhancing security because sophisticated terrorists will tailor their behavior to make themselves appear harmless." IBM has been a pioneer in maintaining records on individuals. IBM's Hollerith Machines helped the Nazis identify and track concentration camp victims (see Edwin Black's "IBM and the Holocaust").

Indianapolis Star reports, "For several weeks, the FBI has been using a single-engine plane to conduct surveillance in the Bloomington area and interviewing Indiana University international students as part of its counterterrorism activities. IU and FBI officials confirmed the federal agency's actions Friday but provided few specifics, saying the release of too much information could compromise investigative efforts. Residents said they have seen the small white plane at least since Feb. 19, making passes about noon, in the late evening and after midnight. FBI spokesman Doug Garrison said the activities in Bloomington are part of the agency's nationwide antiterrorism efforts. He would not say how much longer the flyover surveillance would be conducted." Impeach Bush Now!

Capitol Hill Blue reports: "Warning! The next car you buy or trip you make may cause your car dealer or travel agent to report you to the federal government. Car salesmen and travel agents are being drafted into the war on terrorism. Many of them don't like it. The USA Patriot Act, that sweeping anti-terrorism law that creates massive new police powers, also brings auto dealers and travel agents into the category of businesses who must report transactions to Uncle Sam as part of new anti-money laundering requirements. This means new training, new audits and new paperwork along with more costs for what many consider to be questionable benefits...Some of the lower-profile provisions are only now emerging into view to a shocked public. Mark Lewis, owner of the Fresno-based Mark Lewis Travel Network, said the new regulations could kill a small businesses like his."

"Some booksellers are troubled by a post-Sept. 11 federal law that gives the government broad powers to seize the records of bookstores and libraries to find out what people have been reading. Bear Pond Books in Montpelier, Vt., will purge purchase records for customers if they ask, and it has already dumped the names of books bought by its readers' club. "When the CIA comes and asks what you've read because they're suspicious of you, we can't tell them because we don't have it," store co-owner Michael Katzenberg said. "That's just a basic right, to be able to read what you want without fear that somebody is looking over your shoulder to see what you're reading."

Jim Ridgeway reports that Bush's "Department of Transportation [wants to] officially label every person who rides a commercial airliner as a potential terrorist and a threat to national security. By doing this, the department can gather all sorts of information and conduct background investigations of airline passengers that otherwise would require court orders... DOT 'is proposing that passengers' names be entered into a computer program that will then match their name against names in law enforcement systems of records, financial and transactional databases, public source information, proprietary data, and be used to create risk assessment reports. When a person is identified as being a possible suspect, in violation of any federal, state, territorial, tribal, local, international, or foreign law, the information will be forwarded to the appropriate law enforcement agency.'"

Despite Congressional restrictions, Poindexter is spending $20 million to develop the Total Information Awareness program. "Cycorp, based in Austin, Texas, which was awarded $9.8 million to work on a prototype database; Telcordia, based in Morristown, N.J., which won a $5.2 million contract to focus on connecting data already available within different government offices; Hicks Associates, of McLean, Va., which was awarded $3.6 million to study the feasibility of TIA, how it would develop, and to create a prototype; Booz, Allen & Hamilton, based in Falls Church, Va., which won a $1.5 million contract. Its purpose was not publicly disclosed. Raytheon Co., based in Lexington, Mass., which confirmed that it is under contract with DARPA. Spokesman David Shay declined to outline Raytheon's specific role. Another research firm, RAND Corp., based in Santa Monica, Calif., confirmed it was expecting to work on TIA. Neither the company nor the Pentagon would provide details." Impeach Bush Now!

"Negotiators have agreed that a Pentagon project intended to detect terrorists by monitoring Internet e-mail and commercial databases for health, financial and travel information can't be used against Americans...The decision meant almost complete failure for a last-minute Pentagon effort to protect the program from the Wyden amendment by establishing advisory committees to oversee the program...The negotiators did agree to extend from 60 to 90 days the time the Defense Dept. would have to provide a detailed report to Congress, including its costs, goals, impact on privacy and civil liberties and prospects for successes against terrorists. Unless that report was filed, all further research on the project would have to stop immediately. Bush could keep the research alive by certifying to Congress that a halt 'would endanger the national security of the United States.'"

"A federal law aimed at catching terrorists has raised the hackles of many of the nation's librarians, who say it goes too far by allowing law enforcement agencies to watch what some people are reading. The USA Patriot Act, passed after the Sept. 11 attacks, gave the FBI new powers to investigate terrorism, including the ability to look at library records and computer hard drives to see what books patrons have checked out, what Web pages they've visited, and where they've sent e-mails. The Department of Justice says the new powers are needed to identify terrorist cells. But some librarians... worry that the FBI has returned to routinely checking on the reading habits of intellectuals, civil rights leaders and other Americans. Those tactics, common in the 1950s and 1960s, were occasionally used to brand people as Communists. 'Some of this stuff is pretty scary, and we are very concerned that people's privacy is being violated,' American Library Assoc. Pres. Maurice J. Freedman said."

WashPost reports, "Federal authorities have begun enlisting campus police officers in the domestic war on terror, renewing fears among some faculty and student groups of overzealous FBI spying at colleges and universities that led to scandals in decades past. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the FBI has strengthened or established working relationships with hundreds of campus police departments, in part to gain better access to insular communities of Middle Eastern students, government officials said. On at least a dozen campuses, the FBI has included collegiate police officers as members of local Joint Terrorism Task Forces, the regional entities that oversee counterterrorism investigations nationwide." End government spying - Impeach Bush Now!

"The Senate voted today to bar deployment of a Pentagon project to search for terrorists by scanning information in Internet mail and in the commercial databases of health, financial and travel companies here and abroad... Under the legislation passed today, research and development of the system would have to halt within 60 days of enactment of the bill unless the Defense Department submitted a detailed report about the program, including its costs, goals, impact on privacy and civil liberties and prospects for success in stopping terrorists. The research could also continue if Bush certified to Congress that the report could not be provided or that a halt 'would endanger the national security of the US.' The limits on deploying, or using, the system are stricter. While it could be used to support lawful military and foreign intelligence operations, it could not be used in this country until Congress had passed new legislation specifically authorizing its use." Just Say No to TIA!

"The court's decision has troubling ramifications for consumers, service providers and the growth of the Internet," said Sara Deutsch, vice president and associate general counsel for Verizon. "It opens the door for anyone who makes a mere allegation of copyright infringement to gain complete access to private subscriber information without the due process protections afforded by the courts."

Admiral Poindexter says "because the [Total Information Awareness] system would look only for certain patterns in commercial databases - not create any centralized record-keeping system of American citizens' activities - it would not violate civil liberties. But that has not overcome discomfort over the admiral's premise that the battlefield command center must now watch the private activities of American civilians to detect potential terrorists. Civil liberties groups worry that preventing the system's misuse will be difficult because it breaks down the traditional separation among law enforcement, military and intelligence agencies. Poindexter's legal troubles later stemmed in part from the 6,000 messages he destroyed with Colonel North. He was convicted on five felony counts, including lying to Congress, destroying documents and obstructing Congress in its investigation, but his conviction was overturned on appeal."

"The United States is at risk of turning into a full-fledged surveillance society. A new ACLU report, 'Bigger Monster, Weaker Chains: The Growth of an American Surveillance Society' provides an overview of the many ways in which we are drifting toward a surveillance society, and what we need to do about it."

Reuters reports, "Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin vowed to block funding for the [Total Information Awareness] program now while it is still under development, until Congress can give it a thorough review. 'Our country must fight terrorism, but America should not unleash virtual bloodhounds to sniff into the financial, educational, travel and medical records of millions of Americans,' Wyden told reporters on Capitol Hill. Wyden has introduced an amendment to a large spending package being debated in the Senate that would ban any funding for the program. Feingold introduced separate legislation to suspend the project until Congress gets oversight of it. A third Democrat, Sen. Jon Corzine, dubbed the Total Information Awareness system 'Orwellian,' and a coalition of left- and right-wing groups also denounced the computer dragnet at a news conference."

Declan McCullagh writes, "The biggest problem with the criticism of the Total Information Awareness system is that it's too shortsighted. It's focused on what the Poindexters of the world can do with current database and information-mining technology. That includes weaving together strands of data from various sources--such as travel, credit card, bank, electronic toll and driver's license databases--with the stated purpose of identifying terrorists before they strike. But what could Poindexter and the Bush administration devise in five or 10 years, if they had the money, the power and the will? That's the real question, and therein lies the true threat... What could a corrupt FBI, Secret Service or Homeland Security police force do with advanced technology by the end of the decade? What if there was another terrorist attack that prompted Congress to delete whatever remaining privacy laws shield Americans from surveillance?" It's time for a Privacy Amendment to the Constitution!

The Brattleboro Reformer reports, "Congressman Bernard Sanders (I-VT) said Friday he will introduce legislation to exempt libraries and bookstores from parts of the sweeping USA Patriot Act. 'The expansion of surveillance, monitoring and investigation into our libraries and book sellers is truly disturbing,' Sanders said in a statement Friday released in conjunction with a Burlington press conference. 'Libraries and bookstores have always been a source of learning, knowledge and information. The right to read without the fear of government surveillance is a cornerstone of our democracy. I will do everything in my power to ensure that Congress passes legislation that will protect Americans' constitutional rights to read books without fear that someone is violating their right to privacy.'" Hey Bernie - that's a decent start, by why don't you try to repeal the whole awful bill, and restore Freedom in America? We'll support you all the way!

Post-Dispatch reports, "Law enforcement agents aren't always waiting for court orders before demanding information. 'The requests for customer records are up three or four times what they were before - and we're getting a lot of requests for voluntary disclosures because of national security,' said [security law expert Albert] Gidari, whose clients include AT&T Wireless, Nextel and Boeing. 'Agents in certain field offices are impatient and view you as unpatriotic (if you decline). I've had instances where agents have said, 'Give me your Social Security number and your address' to an in-house lawyer who wouldn't produce records without a subpoena.' Such high-pressure tactics are not the norm, Gidari said. But it's not uncommon for agents to ask companies to hand over customer and employee data without a warrant. And in cases related to national security investigations, the companies are often giving law enforcement what it wants, according to a poll of 797 chief security officers."

"It's time to switch gears. America doesn't need huge centralized databases that track each and every citizen. What it needs is decentralized intelligence. And that means extensive training for law-enforcement and government personnel on the ground, across the country. The country needs Customs personnel who know what to look for at the borders, like the officer in Port Angeles, Wash., who noticed a suspicious driver trying to enter the U.S., investigated further, and found a load of bomb components intended for attacks on Millennium celebrations. America needs flight-training instructors like the one in Minnesota who alerted the FBI to Zacarias Moussaoui's alleged desire to learn to fly a plane but not to land one. The country needs alert passengers on airplanes, like those who noticed and took down shoe-bomber Robert Reid on American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris." What America IS getting, instead, is a total violation of privacy.

NY Times reports "The Denver police have gathered information on unsuspecting local activists since the 1950's, secretly storing what they learned on simple index cards in a huge cabinet at police headquarters. When the cabinet filled up recently, the police thought they had an easy solution. For $45,000, they bought a powerful computer program from a company called Orion Scientific Systems. Information on 3,400 people and groups was transferred to software that stores, searches and categorizes the data. Then the trouble began. After the police decided to share the fruits of their surveillance with another local department, someone leaked a printout to an activist for social justice, who made the documents public. The mayor started an investigation. People lined up to obtain their files. Among those the police spied on were nuns, advocates for American Indians and church organizations. To make matters worse, the software called many of the groups 'criminal extremists.'"

If you thought the U.S. Patriot Act and Total Information Awareness laws would only be used against foreigners, think again. In a scene straight out of Orwell's 1984, Big Brother came knocking on retired Chief Petty Officer Michael Moore's door. Apparently the Too Much Information... oops, we mean Total Information Awareness program didn't like his email to a friend, and no doubt confused this Moore with the producer of "Bowling at Columbine" - so the thought police came-a-calling to reel him in. Heaven forbid, anyone should call Texecutioner Bush, "Satan." Meanwhile, back at the ranch, while Bush is calling bin Laden the "evildoer", Michael Moore is being interrogated for his heavy-handed remarks. Can't the FBI come up with better terrorist leads than this? What happened to our rights???

Wired News reports, "The head of the government's Total Information Awareness project, which aims to root out potential terrorists by aggregating credit-card, travel, medical, school and other records of everyone in the US, has himself become a target of personal data profiling. Online pranksters, taking their lead from a San Francisco journalist, are publishing John Poindexter's home phone number, photos of his house and other personal information to protest the TIA program. Matt Smith, a columnist for SF Weekly, printed the material... in a recent column: 'Optimistically, I dialed John and Linda Poindexter's number - (301) 424-6613 - at their home at 10 Barrington Fare in Rockville, Md., hoping the good admiral and excused criminal might be able to offer some insight,' Smith wrote... What Smith didn't realize was that Poindexter's phone number and other information would end up on more than 100 Web pages a week later as others took up the cause." Right on, Matt!

"Our government's unblinking eyes will try to find suspicious patterns in your credit-card and bank data, medical records, the movies you click for on pay-per-view, passport applications, prescription purchases, e-mail messages, telephone calls, and anything you've done that winds up in court records, like divorces. Almost anything you do will leave a trace for these omnivorous computers, which will now contain records of your library book withdrawals, your loans and debts, and whatever you order by mail or on the Web...the Office of Information Awareness, which Poindexter heads, is developing techniques of 'face recognition, using CCTV camera systems that would allow government officials to identify individuals moving in public space.' As we move, we could also be identified by the way we walk or the sound of our voices...The Washington Post added, 'If computers can learn to identify a person through a video camera, then constant surveillance of society becomes possible too.'"

Note the outrageous spin job in this article from AP: "A little-noticed provision in a new federal education law is requiring high schools to hand over to military recruiters some key information about its juniors and seniors: name, address and phone number. The Pentagon says the information will help it recruit young people to defend their country. But the new law disturbs parents and administrators in some liberal communities that aren't exactly gung-ho about the armed forces....and creates a moral dilemma over the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy on gays." So having your child harassed by military recruiters - who are famous for saying anything to get hold of a warm body - is offensive ONLY to liberals concerned with gay rights? Yeah, right, AP. There's more to this than recruitment...Big Brother can now monitor high school kids.

Kevin McCauley writes: "The Bush Administration plans to trash the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans in its pursuit of terrorists. We are all suspects in the Pentagon's total information awareness' plan that makes George Orwell look like a piker. Is Charlie Manson whispering advice into the ear of John Poindexter?" (Subscription to Odwyer's Daily required).

Bridget Gibson writes: "Futuristic fiction writers have long tried to envision a world in which no one can make even ordinary motions that are not tracked and watched and catalogued by some shadowy 'Big Brother' government. What those writers could not have known is how or why such an intrusive monster would manifest itself into our American society without so much as a blink from most of the citizenry. The Bush administration now brings the second half of its tenure to a thunderous applause of flag waving patriotism with the unveiling of the 'Total Information Awareness' program. This wonderful new product line will undoubtedly become a household name in a very short while with its astounding powers to snoop and pry into the most mundane of corners. Santa's list merely consisted of whether you were naughty or nice, but John Poindexter wants his list to have all of the details. Details from all of your communications (telephone calls, emails and internet web searches), banking,..."

Chicagotribune.com reports: "The scrutiny and unease surrounding a fledgling information-gathering program at the Defense Department intensified Friday as an influential Republican senator called for a thorough investigation of the initiative, which is headed by Iran-contra figure John Poindexter. In a letter to the Pentagon's inspector general, the agency's in-house watchdog, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) requested a full review of the Total Information Awareness program, which envisions collection of a mass of personal data on individuals' driver's licenses, passports, credit card purchases, car rentals, medical prescriptions, banking transactions and more....Grassley, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee and incoming chairman of the Finance Committee, cited concerns about the $10 million initiative's effects on privacy, and he questioned why the FBI and Justice Department have been shut out of the project."

Doug Thompson writes: "As part of its expanded powers under the guise of 'homeland security,' the federal government is developing interlinked databases that will track financial transactions, phone calls, Internet activity, gun ownership and even vehicle use of all Americans...'What is under development here is a coordinated effort to pull together all the available data on every American who works, banks, buys on credit, purchases a firearm or sends an email on the Internet,' says computer security expert Allen Eagleton....Eagleton says Americans had better get used to the fact that everything they do will be monitored and recorded....'All of this information will go to the government and they will know when you left home, the route you took and where you are for Thanksgiving dinner. And if you go turkey hunting this Thanksgiving, Uncle Sam can know what kind of gun you use to shoot turkey and just what load of bird shot you're using in it.'"

"Pete Aldridge, the chief of technology for the Defense Department, told reporters that the [Total Information Awareness] project is intended to test whether new computer tools can comb through masses of information - such as credit card and bank transactions, car rentals and gun purchases - and spot clues to the planning of terrorist acts. 'This is an important research project to determine the feasibility of using certain transactions and events to discover and respond to terrorists before they act,' Aldridge said in a statement designed to address criticism in newspaper editorials and elsewhere about the project's civil liberty implications." Hey Pete - quit spinning us! We never gave the Pentagon permission to have ANY access to our e-mails, online purchases, bank records, or other private information. What part of NO don't you understand? Impeach Bush Now!

"In a victory for the Bush administration, a secretive appeals court ruled the US government has the right to use expanded powers to wiretap terrorism suspects under a law adopted after the Sept. 11 attacks. The ruling was a blow to civil libertarians who say the expanded powers, which allow greater leeway in conducting electronic surveillance and in using information obtained from the wiretaps and searches, jeopardize constitutional rights. In a 56-page ruling overturning a May opinion by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the three-judge appeals court panel said the Patriot Act gave the government the right to expanded powers....Civil liberties groups, which had urged the appeals court -- comprised of three appeals court judges named by Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist to uphold the court's order, slammed the ruling....The appeal hearing was not public, and only the Justice Department's top appellate lawyer, Theodore Olson, presented arguments."

Below are the exact words in the proposed law as written and passed by the House (Res. 5710). The new agency can engage in domestic spying, for instance, and once classified as a matter of national security, no records of what was done or who was investigated can be revealed. This is how the Republicans have changed our form of open, democratic government to covert ops. Unless we fight this, there will be a complete breakdown of our First Amendment rights and our ability to undo the damage that has been done. It is the agency itself who will determine what is to be classified. And anyone who seeks access to critical information that might expose wrongdoing by government agencies will be asked to sign a "secrecy contract" which will prevent them from further investigation. This document is referring to them as "voluntary agreements."

"Language tucked inside the Homeland Security bill will allow the federal government to track the e-mail, Internet use, travel, credit-card purchases, phone and bank records of foreigners and U.S. citizens in its hunt for terrorists... The bill establishes the Total Information Awareness program within a new agency - the Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (SARPA), which would be modeled on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the central research office for the Defense Department that pursues research and technology, and led to the creation of the Internet. DARPA and SARPA both would be under the supervision of [convicted Iran-Contra felon] Adm. John Poindexter [who] 'is not accepting any interview requests at this time.'"

"The ACLU today asked a federal court to order the DOJ to respond immediately to a FOIA lawsuit seeking information on the government's use of extraordinary new surveillance powers...(It) seeks...the number of times the government has: Directed a library, bookstore or newspaper to produce 'tangible things,' e.g, the titles of books an individual has purchased or borrowed or the identity of individuals who have purchased or borrowed certain books; Initiated surveillance of Americans under the expanded Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; Conducted 'sneak and peek' searches, which allow law enforcement to enter people's homes and search their belongings without informing them until long after; Authorized the use of devices to trace the telephone calls or e-mails of people who are not suspected of any crime; Investigated American citizens or permanent legal residents on the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment (e.g., writing a letter to the editor or attending a rally)."

William Safire writes, "If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you: 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."

NY Times writes, "The Pentagon is constructing a computer system that could create a vast electronic dragnet, searching for personal information as part of the hunt for terrorists around the globe- including the US. As the director of the effort, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter [a major Iran-Contra criminal], has described the system in Pentagon documents and in speeches, it will provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access to information from Internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents, without a search warrant." Nancy Pelosi and Tom Daschle, you better put a stop to this madness IMMEDIATELY.

Thanks to the Patriot Act, the FBI now has almost unlimited power to check library patron records, Internet use and any other materials that could help track client reading histories (it also applies to booksellers and even medical records!). The law contains a gag order threatening librarians with criminal prosecution if they tell anyone of the FBI visits. The FBI must get a warrant from a judge, but the standard is lower than probable cause. And the evidence, too, is secret. At least 8% of all libraries have been forced to reveal patron information. Librarians are outraged and upset. But has former librarian Laura Bush stepped forward in their defense? Harhar! Every dry drunk comes with a quivering codependent.

Wired.com reports: "Initial rollout of what may eventually become the world's largest silicon repository of personal data could be less than 90 days away. As expected, civil liberties groups aren't happy about it. The Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II (CAPPS II) is designed to scan multiple public and private databases for information on individuals traveling into and out of the United States...In addition to accessing FBI, National Crime Information Center (NCIC) and State Dept. databases, CAPPS II is expected to spider IRS, Social Security, state motor vehicle and corrections department, credit bureau and bank records....'A basic issue in privacy is 'function creep,'' said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. 'Once a surveillance system is put in place for a particular function, for example, aviation security...it can be used for many other functions as well. We've seen this with Social Security numbers on the government side..."

Steve Kettman writes: "A former Clinton administration official in charge of privacy issues warned Friday that the Bush administration risked setting the country back decades on privacy policy if it did not heed the lessons of the past. Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University, evoked the witch-hunt atmosphere of 'anti-Communist excesses' to offer a sobering reminder of the dangers of repealing personal liberties in the name of the war on terrorism....'There is a seductive trap in the (Bush) administration's rhetoric,' Swire said. 'They are saying that they will protect privacy as provided by the Constitution. That sounds good, but unfortunately most of the effective privacy protections today come from statutes and not from the Constitution itself. That approach is a recipe for repealing all of the laws that we wrote in the 1970s to prevent this lawlessness and abuse of power.'"

NSA, "The largest U.S. intelligence agency will spend millions to upgrade the technology it uses to sift through the huge volume of telephone conversations, e-mail and other worldwide communications chatter it monitors, under a new ... $282 million contract with Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego to help develop a more refined system for culling useful intelligence from a flood of data it collects daily... Most details about it are classified, as is most information about the NSA. But analysts said the deal reflects the growing challenge of electronic eavesdropping. 'There's a ton more communications out there and how to sift through that is an increasing problem for the NSA,' said Richard Best of the Congressional Research Service. The advent of e-mail, pagers, cellular phones, fax machines and the growth of international telephone service has left the NSA with 'profound 'needle-in-a-haystack' challenges,' Best said." Who gave our govt the power to spy on us?

Welcome to the Bush Administration, where someone will be watching you! The Patriot Act lets the government search your computer and websites you visited without a search warrant, Operation TIPS has started where US citizens are spying on one another, and video cameras are watching you in almost every city. Ari Fleisher wasn't lying when he said last Sept "all Americans...need to watch what they say, watch what they do." (But you can still buy a gun without being checked.) Operation TIPS, the video surveillance, and the govt. computer hacking would NOT have stopped 9/11, nor has it made the US safer. The US had the right information to stop 9/11, but unfortunately there were communication, follow up issues and mistakes made. Cameras watching you throw out your trash, cameras watching you with your baby, a neighbor wondering what you are doing so they report you, your computer searched on a daily basis...

Writes Wayne Madsen in Online Journal: "The Bush administration, complete with its Homeland ('Heimland') Security fixation, Gestapo-like TIPS (Terrorist Information and Prevention System) program, and continuous war preparations and sabre rattling, now has its own hero: Eunice Stone of Cartersville, Georgia. The Nazis glorified a young 22-year old man named Horst Wessel. A Nazi thug and whoremonger, Wessel was supposedly killed in his Berlin rooming house by Communists. In fact, Wessel died in a bar room brawl fight over a prostitute. Nevertheless, the Horst Wessel became a hero and his song became the official Nazi anthem...Now, the Bush administration and its allies in the corporate media are praising Stone for turning in three young Muslim medical students who stopped at a Calhoun, Georgia restaurant on their way to Miami."

Writes ER Shipp: "The customer at a Shoney's in Calhoun, Ga., may or may not have jumped the gun. The three Muslim medical students may or may not have said something about attacking the U.S. on Sept. 13. In New York, the young men from Lackawanna may or may not be terrorists. But what happened down South last week, and the roundup of six Muslim men upstate, offer uneasy glimpses into the country we live in during this open-ended war against terrorism...She appears to have done exactly what the government wants all of us to do: report anything even slightly suspicious - even at the risk of later being labeled overly nosy. Indeed, Gov. Pataki has enlisted all New Yorkers to do the same thing in announcing a terror tip hotline will be set up here in a few days. We are being asked to become a nation of spies, something that may pay off in Lackawanna...The sad but undeniable truth now is that each of us must be a potential informer because each of us is a potential target."

"The secretive federal court that approves spying on terror suspects in the United States has refused to give the Justice Department broad new powers, saying the government had misused the law and misled the court dozens of times, according to an extraordinary legal ruling released yesterday...A May 17 opinion by the court that oversees the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) alleges that Justice Department and FBI officials supplied erroneous information to the court in more than 75 applications for search warrants and wiretaps, including one signed by then-FBI Director Louis J. Freeh...Given such problems, the court found that new procedures proposed by Attorney General John D. Ashcroft in March would have given prosecutors too much control over counterintelligence investigations and would have effectively allowed the government to misuse intelligence information for criminal cases, according to the ruling." Nice start – now Congress should repeal the USA Patriot Act!

From the NY Times: "The Bush administration today formally rolled back some major protections for the privacy of medical records adopted by President Bill Clinton.… [including] a requirement that doctors, hospitals and other health care providers obtain written consent from patients before using or disclosing personal medical information for treatment or paying claims. Instead, providers will have to notify patients of their remaining rights and have to make 'a good-faith effort to obtain a written acknowledgment of receipt of the notice'." Adds Truthout Editor Marc Ash, "The most alarming thing about this decision is that it has "force of law" and it greatly relaxes restrictions on sharing patient medical records. It's important to bear in mind that is the action that was sought by Health Care Industry and categorically opposed by consumer advocacy groups."

The New Haven Register writes, "Joe Lieberman could have stopped cold the paranoid idea of turning America into a nation of government snitches. Instead, the legislation creating a department of homeland security has sailed through the New Haven Democrat's Senate committee. There was not even a nod to the alarms over the Justice Department's idea of recruiting hundreds of thousands of Americans as government informants. The plan is so repugnant that civil rights advocates and Republican conservatives have banded together to oppose it. Turning ordinary Americans — letter carriers, utility or delivery workers, among others — into government snitches is something for Castro's Cuba or Hitler's Germany, not the United States... We wonder if Lieberman really wants his neighbors on Alston Avenue spying on each other. The bill reported out of his committee suggests he does." Hey Joe - Democrats didn't elect you to help Bushcroft take away our freedom! Call 202-224-4041.

"We call for the immediate and total repeal of the 2001 USA Patriot Act for the following reasons and more: It breaks the political backs of the judiciary and legislative branches of government... It allows random arrests and detention without hearings or trials for anyone or any group designated by the President. Retroactive Prosecution, too!..It allows the concealment of Presidential records... It permits secret "Military Tribunals" for presidentially-designated "terrorists"... It legalizes "sneak-n-peek" searches and seizures... It allows the unlawful infiltration and surveillance of legal, domestic religious, labor and political organizations... It allows the wholesale surveillance of private citizens, private business records and other materials without proof of probable cause... It destroys all e-mail and internet privacy." Sign the petition!

"In a development bordering on what the American Civil Liberties Union called 'surreal,' the on-line magazine Salon.com today revealed that the Department of Justice is forwarding incoming Operation TIPS calls to the Fox-owned 'America's Most Wanted' television series. 'This is like retaining Arthur Andersen to do all of the SEC's accounting,' said Rachel King, an ACLU Legislative Counsel. 'It's a completely inappropriate and frightening intermingling of government power and the private sector. What's next - the government hires Candid Camera to do its video surveillance?' 'If it continues to cooperate with the government on Operation TIPS, America's Most Wanted should move networks and rename itself 'Big Brother,'' King said." What ELSE is next -- the Mechanical Hound from 'Fahrenheit 451'?

"The Department of Homeland Security, as envisioned by the White House and House members, will have more than 170,000 employees and an annual budget of 38 billion dollars. It will take over the Coast Guard, Secret Service, Border Patrol and Federal Emergency Management Agency among other services. The legislation exempts the new institution from the Freedom of Information Act, which provides for declassification of secret government documents after 30 years. But contrary to Bush's wishes, the House banned the so-called 'Operation TIPS,' under which the Justice Department was to recruit truck and taxi drivers and postal workers as its unpaid informants in the war on terror." Stay tuned. The Bush DOJ announced earlier that they will forge ahead with TIPS, regardless of a House ban.

Writes James Ridgeway: "Are we headed toward martial law? Last week Peter Kirsanow, a Bush appointee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, said in Detroit that he envisions a situation in which the public will demand internment camps for Arab Americans. If terrorists attack the U.S. for a second time and if 'they come from the same ethnic group that attacked the World Trade Center, you can forget about civil rights,' he said." On 'Rats in the Belfry': "But buried in Bush's domestic terrorism program is a suggestion that along with letter carriers, meter readers, and cable technicians, churches will play an important role in 'a national reporting system that allows these workers, whose routines make them well positioned to recognize unusual events, to report suspicious activity.' Bush himself, in an April speech in Knoxville, Tennessee, spoke of the need for a Citizen Corps and, as a step in that direction, urged citizens to gather around their religious institutions."

"In the last several days, a national firestorm has started to build around a program proposed by President Bush to recruit one million volunteers to act as spies and informants against their neighbors. Under the proposed program -- which the President is calling Operation TIPS -- the government would recruit letter carriers, utility workers, cable installers, and others whose jobs allow them access to private residences to report 'suspicious activities.' But the plan has run into trouble in Congress…It is not clear what the Senate will do, but it is likely to vote on the bill in the coming days. The fate of this deeply misguided program could very well rest with the Senate. Take Action! Your Senators will play a key role in deciding whether or not Operation TIPS will go ahead. You can read more and send a FREE FAX to your Senators, urging them to reject this misguided program, from our action alert." Bush's DOJ has announced that they will forge ahead with TIPS! Stop it Now!

Boston Globe writes, "OPERATION TIPS - the Terrorism Information and Prevention System - is a scheme that Joseph Stalin would have appreciated... This is not an updating of George Orwell's '1984.' It is not a satire on the paranoid fantasies of right-wing kooks who see black helicopters swooping across their big sky. It will be a nationwide program run by Attorney General John Ashcroft's Justice Department... Ashcroft's informant corps is a vile idea not merely because it violates civil liberties in a narrow legal sense or because it will sabotage genuine efforts to prevent terrorism by overloading law enforcement officials with irrelevant reports about Americans who have nothing to do with terrorists. Operation TIPS should be stopped because it is utterly anti-American. It would give Stalin and the KGB a delayed triumph in the Cold War - in the name of the Bush administration's war against terrorism.."

"We, the undersigned, categorically reject George Bush's Freedom Corps, Citizens Corps, Citizens Corps Councils, Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System), Volunteers in Police Service, and Neighborhood Watch Program. We refuse to participate in an American version of East Germany's Stasi or the similar citizens' spying programs established by Nazi Germany, Vichy France, Stalinist Russia, Mao's Cultural Revolution, or Khmer Rouge Cambodia. We refuse to spy on our neighbors, denounce people who have different religious and political beliefs than our own, or use our positions of employment as truck drivers, [etc.] ... to assist law enforcement and intelligence agencies in creating files on people exercising their constitutional rights... Under no circumstance will we join or be coerced into joining any of the government groups that encourage spying on our fellow citizens." Sign the petition! Also, check out the linked articles decrying this totalitarian plan.

Why did Dick Cheney lash out at Congress over the old news that the National Security Agency (NSA) failed to translate key phone calls intercepted on 9-10-01? The answer is simple - because Cheney wishes we could return to the days when the mere existence of the NSA was top secret. Now it is known throughout the world - though never officially acknowledged in the US - that the NSA's Echelon system intercepts every electronic communication in the world, including phone calls, e-mails, and faxes. In other words, the NSA is Big Brother.

Writes Mary MacElveen: "When Franklin D. Roosevelt made the following remark, 'The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself,' how right on target this esteemed president was not only back in his day, but the present as well. We have since allowed this act, the USA Patriot Act to place fear in its citizens and such fear does nothing to unite us, but divide us. Which leads me to another profound quote, by another esteemed president and one of our country's first and true patriots. This quote states, 'When the people are afraid of the government, that's tyranny. But when the government is afraid of the people, that's liberty.' The patriot who cited that was Thomas Jefferson. Mr. Jefferson was correct in his quotation. We have allowed our government to instill fear in us through their various threat alerts, while dismissing real threats as cited by Special Agent Wright."

"John Ashcroft, likely inspired while rolling around on the plush carpet of the Attorney General's office during a sudden onset of speaking in tongues, has given the FBI new powers for domestic spying. FBI Director Robert Mueller, ever-vigilant for the rights of Americans, assured the public that the Bureau's agents had been 'hampered' by bureaucratic restrictions, his tone and substance closely resembling an American executive grumbling about the Environmental Protection Agency's having hampered sluicing operations of toxic sludge into wetlands. The FBI is now free, in the great, 'no damn fed'rah regulation' tradition of Enron or Silverado savings and loan, to pursue its goals. Only this is not just another crooked corporation chiseling people's savings, but a secret police force with vast powers and an unwholesome history. Needless to say, Mr. Bush warmly welcomed the changes." So writes John Chuckman in YellowTimes.org.

"Technicians threw out legitimate wiretap information from an investigation of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network after flaws were discovered in the FBI's e-mail surveillance system, bureau documents show. According to a March 2000 memo to FBI headquarters, the surveillance device, once known as Carnivore, not only picked up the e-mails of its target 'but also picked up e-mails on non-covered targets. 'The FBI technical person was apparently so upset that he destroyed all the e-mail take, including the take on' the suspect, whose name is redacted… Privacy groups and members of Congress have complained that the FBI's e-mail wiretap device has the potential to collect more information than allowed by a warrant. 'Here's confirmation of the fact that not only did it do that, but it resulted in a loss of legitimately acquired intelligence,' said David Sobel, general counsel of EPIC [the Electronic Privacy Information Center], which sued to get the documents released."

"The Bush administration [on Friday] proposed dropping a requirement at the heart of federal rules that protect the privacy of medical records. It said doctors and hospitals should not have to obtain consent from patients before using or disclosing medical information for the purpose of treatment or reimbursement. The proposal, favored by the health care industry, was announced by Tommy G Thompson, the secretary of health and human services...The sweeping privacy rules were issued by President Bill Clinton in December 2000. When Mr. Bush allowed them to take effect last April, consumer advocates cheered, while much of the health care industry expressed dismay... Representative Edward J. Markey [D-MA] said: 'By stripping the consent requirement from the health privacy rule, the Bush administration strips patients of the fundamental right to give their consent before their health information is used or disclosed. The administration's proposal throws the baby away with the bath water."

"On Jan. 29, [Kimberly Kelly's] supervisor informed her that the drug giant [Eli Lilly], after conducting a criminal-background check as part of new post-attack security measures, had decided to ban her and several other contract workers from its facilities. Her crime? In 2000, the 46-year-old single mother bounced a $60 check to a refrigerator-rental company... ChoicePoint, which in November launched a private database service offering multistate criminal-history checks, says the monthly volume of checks soared from 3,000 that first month to nearly 25,000 this February. ChoicePoint is performing Lilly's checks." Another employee, Sandy Snodgrass was terminated, but "when Mr. Snodgrass received his ChoicePoint report, it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity." No wonder - Choicepoint is the firm Katherine Harris hired that misidentified scores of minority (and likely Gore) voters as felons, thus purging them from the registry. We demand a criminal investigation of Choicepoint!

"IBM is a company that prides itself on solutions. Recently disclosed materials, however, reveal a chilling portrait of the company's complicity in the evil of the Nazis' search for the 'Final Solution.' Soon after the Nazis came to power in 1933, they established the first concentration camp, the Dachau camp near Munich, Germany. From 1933 to 1944, Hollerith machines were installed at the main concentration camps of Mauthausen, Ravensbrock, Flossenberg and Buchenwald, and were probably present at Auschwitz. Various people were brought into the concentration camps: Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, political prisoners and homosexuals. It was imperative that the Nazis be able to identify, classify, categorize and sort these persons for their own purposes. Upon arrival, a 'selection' process separated those who could be used as slave laborers from those destined for immediate extermination." Michael Hausfield's article was published in the LA Times earlier this year.

"Police...have already developed heat sensors to let them look inside people's houses. The federal 'Carnivore' surveillance system feeds on your meatiest e-mail. Think you can encrypt your way to privacy? The Justice Department is proud of its new 'Magic Lantern': all attempts by computer owners to encode their messages can now be overwhelmed by an electronic bug the F.B.I. can plant on your keyboard to read every stroke. But in the dreams of Big Brother and his cousin, Big Marketing, nothing can compare to forcing every person in the United States — under penalty of law — to carry what the totalitarians used to call 'papers.' The plastic card would not merely show a photograph, signature and address, as driver's licenses do. That's only the beginning. In time, and with exquisite refinements, the card would contain not only a fingerprint, description of DNA and the details of your eye's iris, but a host of other information about you."

"Today's security measures don't work very well, says Richard Sullivan [CEO of Applied Digital Solutions], pointing to the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington. He's says he's got a better idea: a microchip instead of a green card. Foreigners who pass through customs or immigration could be injected with the chip, allowing officials to monitor their activities better and keep terrorists out...But privacy groups reacted with outrage Wednesday to Sullivan's idea for monitoring foreigners. America is not that desperate, one group said, citing a violation of 'bodily integrity.' 'That is so unconstitutional,' said Randall Marshall, legal director for the Miami chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. 'I can't imagine this surviving a constitutional challenge. It just simply goes way too far outside the realm of what we believe in as a society'…" But does John Ashcroft think so? Or the Supreme Five Felons?

"As it turns out, the list of 5,000 is a much smaller subset of an even larger group of people being interviewed. From Sept. 11 to November alone, the FBI received more than 435,000 tips. And, as Reingold found out, you don't have to be Arab or Muslim to get nominated for a house call...Lucas Gutentag of the National ACLU's Immigrant Rights Project believes most people aren't concerned about what's going on with internal security in this nation because they're under the impression that the FBI is targeting and profiling mainly noncitizens. 'It camouflages the full effects of the [Justice Department's] policies because [citizens] don't feel directly affected,' Gutentag said. 'But the principles the government is relying on result in the same kind of practices against everyone.' If you don't think it can happen to you in America, just ask Barry Reingold, an average American with a strong opinion." So writes the SF Chronicle's Emil Guillermo.

"The Central Intelligence Agency is poised to get involved in domestic surveillance and investigations in ways that are unprecedented in its history…But as the nation girds itself against global terrorism carried out on American soil, the barriers between covert, stealthy intelligence and by-the-book domestic law enforcement investigations are beginning to melt. Suddenly, for instance, the CIA will now have access to testimony collected by federal grand juries. And the CIA, FBI, and other federal agencies are, for the first time, being allowed to share vast amounts of information ranging from phone records and credit cards statements to profiles of suspected terrorists...What really worries critics is the CIA's past history of domestic operations. In the 1960s and '70s, for instance, Operation CHAOS included CIA involvement in spying on US citizens including antiwar protesters, black militant groups and even congressmen."

"Attorney General John Ashcroft is considering a plan to relax restrictions on the F.B.I.'s spying on religious and political organizations in the United States, senior government officials said today...The attorney general's surveillance guidelines were imposed on the F.B.I. in the 1970's after the death of J. Edgar Hoover and the disclosures that the F.B.I. had run a widespread domestic surveillance program, called Cointelpro...But in a series of recent interviews, several senior career officials at the F.B.I. said it would be a serious mistake to weaken the guidelines, and they were upset that the department had not clearly described the proposed changes. 'People are furious right now — very, very angry,' one of them said. 'They just assume they know everything. When you don't consult with anybody, it sends the message that you assume you know everything. And they don't know everything.'" So write David Johnston and Dan Van Natta Jr.

"The recently approved antiterrorism law could be used to prosecute foreign hackers, a move critics say could make the United States the world's Internet policeman. The new prosecutorial powers, which have no parallel in other nations, affect computer hacking cases and take advantage of the nation's pivotal role in Internet communications. The precedent could be used to apply to pornography or other crimes in which laws differ between nations, according to a former Justice Department computer crimes prosecutor...More than 80 percent of Internet access points in Asia, Africa and South America are connected through U.S. cities, according to Jessica Marantz of…Telegeography. So, for example, an e-mail sent between two cities in China probably would travel through the United States -- putting its contents under American jurisdiction. 'It's a massive expansion of U.S. sovereignty,' said Mark Rasch [of] Predictive Systems."