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 STALKING "THE THING"
by Jim Hightower
It's back. "The Thing That Just Won't Die" has returned in mutated form to
terrorize
the good people of our country, gorging itself on gargantuan fistfuls of
our First and
Fourth Amendment rights.
"The Thing" was once known as TIA––Total Information Awareness––the
Orwellian/Frankensteinian creation of John Poindexter, the disgraced,
convicted,
and totally loopy former operative from the Reagan White House. Brought in
from
the cold by George W, Poindexter set up shop in a wing of the Pentagon
called
DARPA––Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
At DARPA, the maniacal Poindexter put together his TIA, a super
computerized
program to gather every scrap of data there is on everybody––from our bank
accounts to video rentals, our medical histories to photos of protests
we've attended.
All of this was to be sifted and sorted, ostensibly to detect suspicious
behavior that
would tag someone as a possible terrorist.
Noting that this would make millions of Americans suspected terrorists and
amount
to a wholesale invasion of our people's privacy, the public screamed,
congress
cut-off TIA's funding, and Poindexter ultimately was forced back to
Disgraceland.
But, wait...TIA didn't die. It metamorphosed from DARPA to ARDA––
Advanced Research and Development Activity. While publicly pretending to
kill TIA,
congressional leaders had quietly funneled money to ARDA to resurrect TIA
as
The Thing, which is now pursuing the exact same assault on our privacy as
TIA was,
even using some of Poindexter's old crew.
ARDA says that its Thing can wolf down a "petabyte or more" of data. How
much
is that? A petabyte will hold 40 pages of text on every man, woman, and
child in the
world, with room left to get information on your dog and parakeet.
To help us finally drive a stake through the heart of this Thing,
call the Center for Democracy and Technology: 202-637-9800.
"Office was cut, but data-mining work continues." Austin
American-Statesman.
February 23, 2004.
Copyright 2004 by Jim Hightower & Associates
Contact Sean Doles (sean@jimhightower.com) for more information.
LETTING CONSUMERISM GET UNDER YOUR SKIN
by Jim Hightower
Have you been "chipped" yet?
A company called Applied Digital Solutions wants you to undergo a surgical
procedure to implant
a tiny RFID microchip in your arm. Why would you want to do this? Because
"Radio Frequency ID" chips
will eliminate the heavy burden of having to carry credit cards and
remember your ATM numbers. Instead,
your arm becomes your card and ID number – simply run your arm under a
scanner and your embedded radio
chip sends a digital signal to the computer, allowing you to complete your
transaction. ADS calls its microchip
"VeriPay."
There's only one rational reason that ADS executives think we'll submit to
this: They're insane.
Insane, but serious. They insist that this technological leap is needed
because many people lose their
credit cards. "VeriPay solves that problem," says a corporate PR flak,
cheerfully noting that ADS's chip
"is sub dermal and very difficult to lose. You don't leave it sitting in
the back seat of a taxi," he said.
Sub dermal or not, your ID number still can be stolen by a geeky thief who
rigs up a device to intercept
your radio-transmitted number, then plays it back later to your ATM
machine, emptying your account.
If your number is stolen, or if you simply switch credit-card companies or
banks, what are you to do?
No problem says the PR guy: "If you don't want it anymore... you can go to
a doctor and have it removed.
I call it an opt-out feature," he said gaily. Swell, instead of simply
calling your credit card company to cancel
your card, you'd have to call a surgeon. This is progress?
Still, ADS is banking on you to "get chipped," as they cheerily put it in
a special promotion. To lure you,
they're even offering a $50 discount to the first 100,000 people who sign
up.
By the way, the honchos of ADS are such business geniuses that the
company's stock plummeted from
$12 a share three years ago to about 40 cents today.
I wouldn't entrust two bits to them – much less my arm.
"An ATM card under your skin," www.msnbc.com, December 1, 2003.
Copyright 2004 by Jim Hightower & Associates
Contact Sean Doles (sean@jimhightower.com) for more information. |
THE
TECHNOLOGICAL THEFT OF OUR PRIVACY
by Jim Hightower
Big Brother is no longer a paranoid's nightmare –
he's alive and living deep inside the Pentagon.
Specifically, Big Brother is operating under the pseudonym of DARPA,
the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It has unleashed a
bunch of Dr. Strangeloves to throw our tax dollars at any number of
technological schemes to spy on us and destroy our Constitutional right
to privacy.
DARPA is the agency that has given us the Total Information Awareness
program to ransack any and all databases and compile secret dossiers
on each of our lives. It is also the creator of PAL, the cognitive
computer
system with sensors that let its wearers secretly record our words and
movements. And now it is bringing CTS into our private worlds.
CTS – "Combat Zones that See" – is an urban surveillance system
that uses thousands of cameras linked to a central computer to track,
record, and analyze the movements of every vehicle in a city. Its software
can identify your cars by size, color, shape, license plate... and even by
your face. It lets authorities – either governmental or corporate – keep
an
unblinking eye over everyone's movements in entire cities. CTS says its
goal is to "track everything that moves," storing and categorizing this
phenomenal amount of data so that it is instantly retrievable.
Act suspicious... and CTS flashes an alert to authorities, complete
with your profile.
Oh, don't worry, says DARPA, for CTS is only for foreign
surveillance. But that's news to the corporate contractors developing
CTS .
"The whole theme here is homeland security," says one bluntly.
Once the technology is developed , there'll soon be versions for
sale to everyone from shopping centers to private detectives.
To fight CTS,
call the Federation of American Scientists: 202-546-3300.
"New Pentagon system would track, analyze every vehicle in cities,"
Austin American-Statesman, July 4, 2003.
"Big Brother Gets a Brain," Village Voice, July 9, 2003.
Copyright 2003 by Jim Hightower & Associates
Contact Sean Doles (sean@jimhightower.com) for more information. |
INVASION OF THE PRIVACY SNATCHERS
by Jim Hightower
It's 2003... do you know where you are?
Not the physical you – you're right there. But the little "digital
you"
that banks, credit-card firms, insurance companies, brokerage houses,
and other corporations have created from personal information that that
they've gleaned from you – information you thought was private.
For example, how much liquor have you charged to your credit card,
what's your net worth, have you missed a loan payment, are you taking
medicine for a sexual problem, what's your monthly take-home,
did you make a series of one-nighter trips to Las Vegas last year?
All this and more is collected by your financial institutions and –
thanks to a little known law that congress passed four years ago –
those institutions now can share all of your personal data, compile it
into a detailed profile, and store this digital you inside their
computers.
But they don't stop there – the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act lets them give
"you" to all of their conglomerate affiliates and to sell "you" to other
corporations under joint marketing agreements. The digital you is their
slave... and the actual you doesn't know which corporations have you
or what they're doing with you.
You can thank former senator Phil Gramm for this theft of your
privacy.
At the behest of the industry (which, coincidentally, just happened to
be
his major campaign funder), Phil dutifully maneuvered this body-snatching
bill into law. Gramm left the senate last year and was rewarded with –
what else? – a fat cat job with a giant financial firm that had lobbied
for
this bill.
If you think that these privacy invaders should not be allowed to use
and
sell your personal information without getting permission from you in
writing,
you are not alone. People all across the country are outraged and are
pushing
for action to stop the privacy snatchers. There is both a bill and an
intiative in
California that would outlaw this corporate intrusion. If it passes there,
other
states will follow.
To join this fight for privacy, go to: californiaprivacy.org.
Consumer Reports, June 2003
Copyright 2003 by Jim Hightower & Associates
Contact Sean Doles (sean@jimhightower.com) for more information. |
Cult of Surveillance
ACLU
Government: Cult of Surveillance
The ACLU cited a long list of privacy-leeching programs
that seem to indicate a "cult of surveillance" in the current
administration.
These include:
* Total Information Awareness - Developing in the Pentagon's
secretive research and development wing, Total Information
Awareness is the brainchild of former Reagan National Security
Advisor John Poindexter. The Pentagon-funded project aims to
create the most expansive electronic surveillance network in human
history. It would record and monitor every American's Internet
surfing, reading habits, financial transactions, travel plans and mental
health histories in the hope of predicting future behavior.
Conservative New York Times columnist William Safire has
called the program a "supersnoop's dream."
* Operation TIPS - As envisioned by the Department of Justice,
Operation TIPS would have systematically recruited a network of
government informants among everyday American workers with
easy access to private homes. This army of snoops would have
been composed of postal workers, utility technicians and the
proverbial "cable guy." Popular outcry forced the administration
to scale back its plans for its corps of what the ACLU called
"government-sanctioned peeping Toms" but the government is
pressing forward with a more limited version of the scheme.
* Domestic CIA - Last week, the advisory Gilmore Commission
recommended to Congress that it create a intelligence agency similar
to the CIA, but for use on American soil. Such an agency would, the
ACLU said, inevitably engage in covert activities similar to the smear
campaigns waged against political dissidents - most notably the Rev.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - by the Hoover-era FBI.
* Sweeping New Surveillance Powers for the Department of Justice
- Earlier this week, the Justice Department gained vast new powers
to monitor the lawful activity of Americans. The new powers were
granted when a the ultra-secret, espionage-specific Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review ruled that information
gathered by warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
could be used in criminal proceedings. Significantly, the Justice
Department need only meet a standard far less than probable cause
in order to obtain these warrants.
www.memes.org Be
sure to check out Surv Tampa by Bill
Gallagher
Surv Tampa
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