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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."
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.
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.