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Homeland Security Tests Snoop Computer System
Parallax Blue writes "The Washington Times reports that Homeland Security has developed and is testing a new computer system called ADVISE (Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement) that collects and analyzes personal information on US citizens. Relevant data 'can include credit-card purchases, telephone or Internet details, medical records, travel and banking information.' The program apparently uses the same process as the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness project, which was aborted in 2003 due to privacy concerns."
Ok, I gave up on the U.S. quite a while ago. If *that* is the freedom you were proclaiming for the last few decade, then let me move to the USSR...oh, you brought them *democracy*...damned! :)
As long as good (old) Europe is free(until you bring us democracy too;) I'll just stick to my side of the atlantic (and the channel).
But seriously, U.S. citizens, aware of their surroundings, must be pretty frustrated by these moves.
Delta-Mike November Bravo Tango
It is done in the USA, Blair then copies the ideas in the UK, then this stuff is harmonized up to EU level as an anti-terrorism measure. So you're not safe from this stuff in Europe either.
e /
There's examples with SWIFT.
SWIFT violated Belgium banking law and EU privacy law, and USA FISA law when it handed all it's data to the NSA & CIA. UK banks were complicit in this, and would also face prosecution.
Instead, the EU Commission took over the case from the Belgiums to 'coordinate the response', and are currently agreeing a treaty to legalize the sending of data to the USA as an anti-terrorism measure. So they're setting Europe up as a satellite nation to the USA.
The UK banks meanwhile, are writing to their customers and changing their banking agreements to make what they did legal:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/07/bank_prob
So now they're making themselves immune when they hand data over to foreign governments.
But now if China wants the EU data from HSBC or Citibank or any other major international bank that operates both in the EU and China, then the bank can simply hand over the data to keep the Chinese happy and their banking terms permit it.
So you are not safe in Europe, as long as people like Blair follow the Bush lead. To prosecute the SWIFT case, either the Belgium prosecutors have to stand up to the USA on their own, of it's handed to the EU, but they can't do anything without unanimous consent, so Blair would block any action to protect Europe's interests.
There is no-one fighting Europe's corner here.
I think this could be called a backronym. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backronym
you act as if the statement i made was aimed at republicans.
not to burst your bubble or anything, but it's not about a partisan attack.
there are certain people in this world who will fulfill any morally reprehensible task they are requested (and those people who request them).
these people are pure unmitigated evil and a cancer upon our species, and should be removed.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Several of you have been asking "could this program have prevented 9/11?". No, absolutely not. Did we all forget that after 9/11 all of the intelligence agencies dug into their records and found all kinds of warning signs and other indicators that 9/11 was going to happen?
Hindsight is 20/20 of course, but the point is they had the intel necessary to predict and prevent this, but it was lost in the noise. What they need is not more electronic noise to sift through (and electronic wild goose chases to go on) but better human intelligence. Grepping through all of the worlds internet traffic and phone records is not nearly as useful as having a single agent embedded with a terrorist group or even paying a couple of informers in the "extremist Muslim" community.
One can reasonably argue that flooding the TLA agencies with this data will make their jobs harder and the overall counter terrorism situation worse. What it will accomplish however is pumping mullions of dollars into the private contractors, while allowing the intelligence agencies to justify raising their budgets and hiring more people to run this program. Which do you think is the real goal?
This is not about catching terrorists OR spying on Americans in an effort to turn us into a 1984 police state. It's about money, plain and simple.
Finkployd
You gotta love the Orwellian genius of our darling public servants. Think I'll pen a new law for Congress and the Senate to consider: the Love America And Freedom act. The text of the bill demands immediate impeachment and war crimes trials for the Bush administration. If you disagree with the bill, obviously you hate America and Freedom.
Ask me about my sig!
Are you serious?
Really, are you serious? Because that sure sounds like you're saying that the problem revolves around people not accepting your Judeo-Christian system of morality...which sort of borders on being insulting to most of the world.
OK, assuming that you're serious, the Ten Commandments only apply to religious people who believe that a certain God exists. This excludes everyone but Christians and Jews. Do you really believe that non Judeo-Christians need to follow these? (e.g. 1-4 [I am your god] [I'm the only god] [Don't use my name in vein] [Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy]).
Rule 1 clear doesn't apply to me, as I neither accept nor believe that your God exists. That rules out 2 and 3 for me easily. As I don't believe that your God created the earth in 6 days and rested the 7th, I don't think that I'll be honoring your sabbath (which a committee of Christian men changed from Saturday to Sunday because it suited them). 10 is sort of out, as the materialistic capital-based economy that I live under is based on coveting. That leaves us with: honor your parents, don't commit murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, and don't lie. These are pretty good rules to live by, but only two of these are reflected in the law (lying is legal unless it's in front of a court of law, or in very specific circumstances). Also note the absence of any commandment forbidding one from doing nonlethal harm to your fellow humans. One could follow the Ten Commandments to the letter and still punch everyone in sight in the nose.
IMO, those who claim to follow the Ten Commandments in the spirit of their spiritual ancestors aren't helped by those spiritual ancestors. After Moses brought the tablets down and found that many of the Israelites were worshiping a golden calf, he separated the calf worshipers from the believers in his God, then smote the calf worshipers. So much for not committing murder. One could say that the first act on behalf of the Ten Commandments wasn't only murder, but genocide. So what would be the most important commandment (IMO) was violated immediately upon being published. How many people have been killed in the mane of your God?
It's funny that a people who so dearly believe in absolutes and are so pious about their beliefs are able to find so gray area to violate their own absolute rules. It seems so common that most of the people who claim to be morally elite have a strong tendency to be horribly morally corrupt by their own standards.
Personally, I believe that the world is more complicated than the Ten Commandments allow for. Furthermore, I do not believe that a system based on fear of retribution from a mythological metaphysical power is necessary for developing a system of ethics. These rules are a good start, but seriously...they haven't worked very well over the last 5000 years. What makes you think that they will start working now? Are you suggesting that I accept your God? What makes your God any better than the tens of thousands of other Gods that others have believed in?
-Turkey
Honestly -- lay off the Kool Aid. Take a look at the amount spent on the Iraq war sometime. It's a vast sum; easily enough to have just bought Saddam's cooperation (and let's face it, he was desperate for friends anyway) and all the oil under Iraq.
You forgot, Bush's administration initially stated that Iraqi Oil would pay for reconstruction, of course, he also initially believed that we were going to be greeted as liberators and that this would be a walk in the park.
Naturally, now we've poured far more money into the enterprise than Iraqi oil could ever pay back, especially with us dumping billions into KBR's failed pipelines to nowhere making it even harder to get that oil out.
It's not a conspiracy "theory" when the President himself was running around with the "mission accomplished" banners and making promises he couldn't keep.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
As a capitalist, one known for being callous, would you look the other way while *someone else's* family died, if by doing so you were earning $100 million while it happened?