Thursday, November 14, 2002

Big Brother: Homeland Security Bill

Read this immediately and write to your Senator to stop the madness. This is the most important kind of emergency, so don't think that someone else will make it all okay. We must stop this legislation, because if the system is put in place we may never be able to dismantle it later. It could make Stalin's Russia look like a free country compared to the US.

"November 14, 2002

You Are a Suspect
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

WASHINGTON - If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you:

Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend ? all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."

To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you ? passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance ? and you have the supersnoop's dream: a "Total Information Awareness" about every U.S. citizen.

This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario. It is what will happen to your personal freedom in the next few weeks if John Poindexter gets the unprecedented power he seeks."

more in the article at the URL above.