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DHS's 'Secure Flight' Program Proven Insecure
News.com is reporting the somewhat unsurprising news that a government program we were assured was 'perfectly safe', has actually been proven to be a privacy nightmare. The 'Secure Flight' program matched air traveler information with commercial databases in the interests of national security. The charter for the program specifically forbade the TSA from accessing this information; the organization got their hands on it anyway. The Department of Homeland Security has released a report, detailing these findings and analyzing the situation. The News.com piece makes it clear the report was released on Friday in an attempt to obscure it from public notice; it was only linked to from a DHS subsite, and has not shown up on the DHS or TSA main pages. From the article: "The report from the Homeland Security privacy office takes pains to say that the privacy compromises over Secure Flight were 'not intentional,' and includes a list of seven recommendations to avoid similar mishaps in the future. Those include explaining to the public exactly what's going on and creating a 'data flow map' to ensure information is handled in compliance with the 1974 Privacy Act. This isn't the first report to take issue with Secure Flight. Last year, auditors at the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that the program violated the Privacy Act."
...it hasn't any right at all to be anything but a Boolean, at least at first. DHS has a right to check for the answer to the question 'Is this person a terror suspect?', and perhaps 'Is this person a known friend or confidant of a terror suspect?'. ONLY if the answer to one of those questions is 'yes' have the underpaid security monkeys at the airport got any right whatsoever to see any information on people. All too often, the quest for 'security' is just another grab for power and intimidation.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
I wonder how long it will be before we hear politicians praising a new bill to remove these constraints, framing it in terms of a "wall" which prevents the TSA from effectively securing our skies, like they did when they wanted to let foreign intelligence and domestic law enforcement exchange data?
See, this is why I'm always skeptical of these things. And for some reason, critics are always written off as paranoid or unrealistic. I wonder if they said the same things when people warned that the new "small" income tax would quickly grow?
the report was released on Friday in an attempt to obscure it from public notice
It's an old trick to release news on a Friday night, when less people are going to see it. Also, any day in which a major news story (superbowl, oscar night, day after elections, etc.) is scheduled -- those are the days to read the newspaper carefully-- those are days that are typically used to obscure potentially damaging news.
In a 24-hour news cycle it's much harder to hide bad news from the public, but there are still golden times when the government and others are virtually guaranteed no one will be paying attention. Kudos for bringing this story to light.
The Murder rate in the USA is 16,000 PER YEAR.
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The US terror rate since (and before) 911 death toll was 3,300 TOTAL.
We maintained our constitution for over 200 years with the number of murders growing the whole time, and we didn't take that as a reason to torch our own constitution.
911 shouldn't have changed a damn thing. Yet it seems as if the Bush team has milked it to build the bedrock for a police state. Given their political donations come from the same private interests that profit from such draconian right wing lunacy, it looks like the Bush team staged it themselves, quite honestly.
http://www.the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20Histor
Getting security "locked down" is the wrong answer. Getting the nazis out of office is the right answer.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
We accused Clinton of being a liar and Bush repeatedly lied about their being no domestic wire tapping program or secret prison Mr. Bush drove us to war on a lie. There were no weapons of mass destruction. While I do not like Cynthia McKinney from Georgia at all, she drove a point by attempting to introduce legislation to impeach Bush. Honestly, he is far more impeachable than Clinton. We hold ourselves up on such high, hypocritical horses that we punished Clinton for a blow job: a harmless, repeat harmless act whereas Mr. Bush has effectively killed 16,000 people because he wanted to finish daddy's work. Mr. Bush needs to answer for his actions but, so long as he has money, he has a get out of jail ticket. It would take the collective bravery of the International Criminal Court to bring charges down. I could only hope that the ICC is brave enough to take this on. Bush has committed war crimes under a guise.
Bush is an extremeist in his own right. He is the antithesis of Ahmadenjinad of Iran. It has been speculated that Bush has some fascination with the Apocalypse and the Born-Again Christians do have a preocupation with this event. Clinton got some undeserved negative attention. He did wonders for the economy. The presidency requires an intelligent, well-thought, and well-spoken indidivdual.
Some have attempted to compare Bush to Lincoln. True, both were in unpopular wars and both rather folksy. There remains an important difference. Lincoln was not ideologically driven and he was doing what was morally correct for ANY time period: ending a wrong justified by pseudoscientific means. Lincoln saw the problems with calling our nation free while slavery still existed. This was a moral and ethical dilemna. Lincoln dealt with this. While Lincoln is folksy, it is clear that his intelligence and thought capacity is higher than that of Bush. As far as I am concerned there is no comparison and history will see the George W. Bush Presidency as one of the worst administrations in the history of our country.