"Big Brother" Bush and Connecting the Data Dots

Is anyone, other than the law experts, thinking about what this means to ordinary citizens?

Damn!

What is wrong with these people, who say that they do not care because it will keep us safe? From whom? Our own corporate-controlled government?

Get a grip people! The biggest enemy of Democracy and "our way of life," is not living in a cave in the badlands of Central Asia!

Oh No, the haters of Democracy are much closer.

Osama amd Georgie are Doppelgangers. We will leave it to you to determine which one of them is doing the most damage to the Constitution.


"Big Brother" Bush and Connecting the Data Dots:

"The Total Information Awareness program was killed in 2003, but its spawn present bigger threats to privacy.

by Jonathan Turley

The Disclosure this week of a secret databank operation tracking international financial transactions has caused renewed concerns about civil liberties in the United States. But this program is just the latest in a series of secret surveillance programs, databanks and domestic operations justified as part of the war on terror.

Disclosed individually over the course of the last year, they have become almost routine. Yet, when considered collectively, they present a far more troubling picture, and one that should be vaguely familiar.

Civil liberty-minded citizens may recall the president's plan to create the Total Information Awareness program, a massive databank with the ability to follow citizens in real time by their check-card purchases, bank transactions, medical bills and other electronic means. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, was assigned this task, but after its work was made public, Congress put a stop to it in September 2003 as a danger to privacy and civil liberties.

However, when Congress disbanded the Total Information Awareness program, it did not prohibit further research on such databanks, or even the use of individual databanks.

And, according to a recent study by the National Journal, the Bush administration used that loophole to break the program into smaller parts, transferring some parts to the National Security Agency, classifying the work and renaming parts of it as the Research Development and Experimental Collaboration program.

It was long suspected that Total Information Awareness survived, and the disclosure this week of another massive databank operation has only reinforced that fear. " (Read On, above link)