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HomeSec Blacklist to be Available to Private Companies
unassimilatible writes "The Washington Times reports that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are developing a database that will allow private companies to submit lists of individuals to be screened for a connection to terrorism. The database will eventually allow private-sector entities, such as operators of critical infrastructure facilities or organizers of large events, to submit a list of persons associated with those events to the U.S. government to be screened for any nexus to terrorism. All of this won't be cheap either; total terror-related IT spending by US federal and state governments will run past $100 billion in 2004. But don't feel left out Europeans, since the EU is considering a terror database as well, although France and UK are reluctant to share intel."
Private companies will make their lists available to the department of homeland security! Even your own writeup says this!
It's not like Coca-coka is gonna be getting dirt from you by calling up the feds.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Is the U.K. in the E.U.?
In the EU, but not using the Euro.
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It was the late 1940's/early 1950's. A lot of very talented folks ended up in janitorial jobs for years as a result. You didn't have to be a flaming "I love Joe Stalin" Commie either - briefly joining an organization while in college during the 1930's could come back to haunt you 15 apolitical years later. See Article in Salon
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
The Hollywood blacklist was started in the late 1940's and continued roughly until the late 1950's.
It basically started when the president of the Screen Actor's Guild at the time, an over-the-hill actor named Ronald Reagan, decided to get on the good side of the House Committee on Un-American Activies by volunteering to turn over to them the names of all the people that he suspected of having Communist tendencies in the film industry.
The willingness of this actor to be a total asshole and his enthusiasm in destroying the lives of the other actors that he was supposed to be defending as SAG president caught the attention of the dormant conservative Republicans, who financed his California governor's race in the mid 1960's.
George Orwell's complete works, available online:
http://www.orwell.ru/
On the other side, we have people wielding Orwell. Big Brother is watching you, the government is evil and corrupt, you can't take a piss off-center without a dozen people knowing about it. Here's a hypothetical story I made up, complete with a series of lottery-scale unlikely events, leading to a conclusion that mostly just serves make you scared of your own shadow.
Rent a clue.
The Orwellian scenarios sound like a bunch of pipe-dreaming by paranoids to you because they haven't happened to you.
Yet.
But trust me. They do happen. They happen a lot.
They've happened to me. They've happened to lots of my friends. They've happened to my wife. They've happened to a number of our ancestors. (On her side, at least one per generation for the last three, and that's just counting the ones on the DIRECT line.)
They happened to opposition political figures big time, over and over. Not just in countries "over there" - but right here at home. (Look up the FBI's "COINTELPRO" just for starters.) Every twenty years or so the stuff that happened twenty years back comes to light. And the story is always the same: "That was THEN. That COULDN'T happen NOW." And twenty years later you find out that it WAS happening now, too.
j'accuse is alive and well, as is stereotyping, as is guilt-by-association, and so on.
The conspiracy-theory tinfoil-hat stereotype is VERY convenient for the people who are actually running such operations. It discredits their victims's cries for help, as well as the warnings of those who haven't yet been vicitmized (as far as they can tell) but who understand the dynamics and can thus read the writing on the wall.
The biggest trouble with these things is that, by the time they come for YOU, it's too late. So you have to head them off while they're still being formed up, or still going after just the genuine scumbags (and the people the operators honestly mistake for genuine scumbags), rather than waiting until the machine is well oiled, armored, and compeletely out of control.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
They get to know your location on a precise time and date.
Don't forget while you're there to only pay in plain cash. If you use a credit card or a check, then they'll know you were there either.
Don't forget to take the battery out of your cell phone. Otherwise it will tell them (about every five minutes if they don't explicitly ask it for more reports), exactly where you are.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I don't know about Britain but France has a government agency that enforces strict laws when it comes to their citizens' right to electronic privacy, anonymity, removal from databases, etc.
Interesting to note that the main law (1978) was passed under Giscard D'Estaing - a moderate republican, by U.S. standards.
there's no place like ~
A few months ago, I applied for and received a job as a network engineer at the Pentagon. One of the job requirements was that I had to get a "Secret" security clearance. The company hired me after I told them I was eligible for such a clearance. I started working there while the oh-so sensible and efficient federal government did a background check on me. Two months later, they turned me down, saying that I was a risk to national security because I had my name legally changed thirteen years ago. I therefore lost my job six weeks ago because I went thru a perfectly legal (and public) process that meant nothing more than that I didn't have to have my asshole father's last name anymore. This in spite of the fact that others have received Secret clearances -- and even Top Secret clearances -- after having histories of drug use, mental illness, and even prison sentences, among other things.
This is the same government that says it's going to protect us from Yamir Shitzak blowing us up in the name of Allah. Do you feel any safer? 'Cuz I sure as hell don't.
Now, 3. What's that? Approximately the number of people who die each day due to terrorist attacks.
Let me ask, where's the problem here? I absolutely am not belittling September 11th (in fact, I feel people who call it 'nine-eleven' are the ones doing just that), but there are obviously problems causing more deaths. My uncle lost his best friend that day, and nearly his own life -- he had a meeting in the North Tower at the World Trade Center, but he missed his train that day, and was late. However three people in my school died in automobile accidents in the last three years.
Oh, yeah. Don't forget, the auto number doesn't include the nearly 1500 a day severly injured in an accident. I won't even start on smoking...
I think the money's headed in the wrong direction....
--<Mike>--