Fear For Sale ~ Choicepoint Data Mining & The 2000 Election

George Bush may have ordered the NSA to spy on the American people ~ but he couldn't have done it without help. AT&T, Verizon and Bell South have been named as collaborators in this betrayal of the American people and of the Constitution. Most likely there are others, because according to news reports, only Qwest refused to cooperate.

I remembered as I read all the reports today, that there were others who refused to cooperate with this illegal campaign against the people.

In 2003 when the Plame investigation began, AG Ashcroft was asked to recuse himself from the case because of his association with Karl Rove. Eventually he did. Comey became acting DA and appointed Patrick Fitzgerald as the Special Prosecutor.

I was reminded today of the reports that when Ashcroft was in the hospital and the Bush administration wanted Comey to sign off on their Domestic Spy program, he refused. I believe that Dick Cheney and Andrew Card then visited Ashcroft in the hospital hoping to get him to sign off on the program because they did not want to go to the FISA court where they knew they would be turned down. Ashcroft too refused.

Later I read that when Comey resigned, he spoke emotionally at his farewell dinner party about, and to, other members of the DOJ who, he said, were no longer there ~ but he implied, tearfully, that they had done the right thing, and that 'you know who you are'!

From that speech, even though he was subtle, we got a glimpse of the pressure that had been placed on decent, patriot Americans in the DOJ who refused to participate in the Bush administration's illegal Domestic Spy program. Although he didn't say it plainly, we got the impression that people were either fired, or they resigned rather than spy on their own people.

Comey called them heroes. And I think he himself is one of those heroes we will hear more about some day, who did what he could to stop the criminal activity he knew the Bush administration was involved in. The very best thing he did for his country, was to appoint Patrick Fitzgerald to go after them.

They appear to be the heroes in this sordid story. But there many who were not heroes. Imo, they are traitors to their country. Among them, and this is just my opinion, was the company called Choicepoint. A few months ago I learned about Choicepoint here on DU. I had forgotten the role they played in the 2000 Election.


Fear For Sale
Greg Palast

........

For ChoicePoint, with its 15-billion-plus records on every living and dying being in the United States, Ground Zero would become a profit center lined with gold. Contracts would gush forth from War on Terror fever not hurt by the fact that ChoicePoint did something for George W. Bush that the voters would not: select him as our president.

Here’s how they did it. Before the 2000 election, Choice-Point unit Database Technologies, under a $4 million no-bid contract under the control of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, was paid to identify felons who had illegally registered to vote. The ChoicePoint outfit altogether fingered 94,000 Florida residents. As it turned out, less than 3,000 had a verifiable criminal record; almost everyone on the list had the right to vote. The tens of thousands of “purged” citizens had something in common besides their innocence: The list was, in the majority, made up of African Americans and Hispanics, overwhelmingly Democratic voters. And that determined the race in which Harris named Bush the winner by 537 votes.

270 million suspects
But before ChoicePoint’s miles of files on Americans could become a wartime weapon, the United States had to change radically. That change was announced by President Bush: On September 11, we Americans were the victims of the terrible attack. By September 12, we became the suspects.

......

To say that ChoicePoint is in the “data” business is to miss their market concept utterly: These guys are in the Fear Industry. Secret danger lurks everywhere. Al Qaeda’s just the tip of the iceberg. What about the pizza delivery boy? ChoicePoint hunted through a sampling of them and announced that 25 percent had only recently come out of prison. “What pizza do you like?” asks CEO Smith. “At what price? Are you willing to take the risk?…”



More .....

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/fear_for_sale/

They sell their data to the Government ~ but who gives them permission to collect it? What they collect belongs to us and they do not ask for permission to take it. To me, this is theft. And I think as more and more lawsuits are filed, lawyers should include Choicepoint and other data mining companies. We need laws to stop this theft, if they don't exist already. That they are in league with the Bush family, is no surprise ~

I'm not sure if they bought our information from AT&T, Verizon et al, but if they did, it was not the telephone companies' property to sell, and Choicepoint knows that I'm sure. This is frightening, I had no idea such an entity existed.

John Aravosis did some research a few months ago when he found out that people's personal phone records were for sale on the Internet. He found the site and bought Gen. Clark's phone records with no problem, during the time before the election. He paid about $100.00. He notified Gen. Clark as I remember and Clark filed a complaint. I read today that all of our information is for sale ~

Choicepoint was in the news again when over 100,000 people had their identities stolen as a result of a mistake made by Choicepoint ~ they settled the suit for several million dollars, as I recall.

I think each and every American has been harmed by all of these people, and we each are owed compensation ~ I hope that all their ill-gotten gains, profits are forfeited for the part they played in this disgusting violation of the Constitution's 4th Amendment. If we don't make them pay, we can say goodbye to our democracy, imo.

George Bush and his cohorts are fighting hard to prevent an investigation into their Domestic Spying program. That means to me, that bad as what we know is, what we don't know is far, far worse. If our phone records can be stolen and sold on the Internet ~ records of calls we made, when and to whom, imagine what information they have. This is truly frightening and I'm thinking that laws should have been passed before this technology was let loose on the American people and put into the service of people like George Bush ~

Choicepoint executive?

and his wife, Donna Curling, loves to give big bucks of the $12M she and her husband made bilking folks out of their identity , she loves to pretend to be a democrat and give to all sorts of causes including $25K to kerry, but also $25K to GOP just to balance the scales and guess what....

Donna Curling sits on the board of VoteTrust USA a group that works on lobbying reform around election fraud....

it's sinister how much more dangerous Choicepoint is than even Diebold... hard for me to admit, but I dislike Choicepoint and the Curlings more than Diebold....

remembered the threads here on DU a few months ago. I think Lala Rawraw started one of them when she received a phonecall telling her to watch a TV interview. She said that she was told to 'take notes, and to pay attention to the names of companies' and she asked DUers to watch with her so she would not miss anything. The thread was fascinating as DUers went to work, and that was the first I ever heard of this spooky company ~ so I thought of it today, and just wanted to try to connect the dots between what we heard and to see if this story was connected to Choicepoint.

How on earth can we have a Democracy when there are all these entities, as you said, Diebold, Choicepoint, Think Tanks, Lobbying companies. Congress seems to represent them, rather than the people ~ I wonder what we don't know ~

I will look up the Curlings ~ they sound fascinating! Thqnks for the information ~ :-)

basically our hometown newspaper which is as conservative as can be (Cox comms. owned)
NONETHELESS got so peeved at the Curlings..

when the SEC investigation and the info. about hundreds of thousands of 'compromised' social security numbers and identity thefts happened in Oct. and Curling sold his stock in Nov. of that year, (story came out in Jan. of 2005) I remember our newspaper outted the curlings for their home address and their email addresses in hopes of showing them what identity theft feels like.

it was a crowning moment in mainstream media finally getting an understanding of how dangerous these folks are....
not that I necessarily agree with the outting other than I think they used public sources of the info. such as fundrace.org or some such places to get the data and share it with folks...

either way, I have been in their house and find them to be a lot like the mob.. they try to have a normal life while ruining everyone elses...

I feel most sorry for the younger Curling children.. how they must feel with such hypocrites for parents....

I learned that some women are so afraid to NOT HAVE MONEY they will compromise their health, their value, their morals, everything to be able to send their sons to some snooty ass private school and enroll their daughter in Opera classes... doesn't seem like a fair exchange....

I mean, I never could have imagined this until I read about it here ~ and doesn't Congress usually monitor this kind of development and institute laws to make sure such advances in technology, or science are not abused?

They can't be very nice people ~ I may be judging them too harshly, since I'm only beginning to find out about all this, but I think anyone who would sneakily gather personal data on their own people simply for profit, are pretty much traitors.

No amount of money is worth this ~ if the media ever covers this, people will be horrified. But they're not the only ones who collect data like this. One article I read said Nexis-Lexis does also.

Poor kids ~ I feel sorry for them, and hope they don't turn out like their parents.

Your instincts are probably right, they probably are the equivalent of the mafia ~

the Lexis/Nexis guys and Choicepoint are attached at the hip either thru joint venture or money under table partnerships...

IN fact, I met Donna when she offered to help my election fraud research and I needed free access to Lexis.. this was by phone at first and I'll never forget her words,

"My husband has free access to Lexis.. we can help you and provide you all the data you need"
right, so they could monitor the activists that would seek to bring down their company and trash profits in the state...

gimme a break....

I was too smart for that, but there was a personal incredulity on my part.. I could see this woman had a truly democratic soul but had sold it out to the devil years ago...

I actually suggested she divorce her husband but to no avail.... so powerful her entrenchment in the world of money.... and its evil allure....

K and R!

they make so many mistakes, and then it's the customer(us)responsibility to prove them wrong...

for all the negative press he's generating.

They've tried to buy him off several times and Greg would not take their money.

Greg Palast totally rocks.. totally!! he's my main man!

more like him. I missed him when he came to NYC because they were booked out ~ he really knows what's going on ~

Greg Palast's new book ARMED MADNESS is great!

I am lucky enough to be working on an event featuring him and I received an advance copy. I had to go straight to Chapter 4 On Election fraud. My blood is boiling over details about New Mexico. Anyway, if you like BEST DEMOCRACY MONEY CAN BUY, you'll love this book. He will be touring giving talks on the book. Here is a schedule (I highly suggest that those who have never seen him to make an effort)

M-June 5 Portland
T-June 6 San Francisco
W-June 7 Berkeley
W-June 7 Santa Rosa
TH-June 8 Seattle
F-June 9 San Francisco
F-June 9 Los Angeles
Sa-June 10 San Diego
SU-June 11 Chicago
M-June 12 Wash DC
T-June 13 NYC
W-June 14 NYC
TH June 15 Boulder
F-June 16 Denver
SA-June 17 Albuquerque
SU June 18th Austin
M-June 19 Houston
T- June 20 Columbus
W- June 21 Albany
F- June 23 Atlanta
Sa-June 24 Tampa

how's that a schedule for you?

call to make a reservation? As I said, the last time he was in the city they were booked before we had a chance to go. Each day, the more I learn, even though I always respected his work, but the more I realize how absolutely right he was ~

It makes me furious also, that Choicepoint got away with participating (fraudulently) in stealing the 2000 election. I sincerely hope that if we get a new Congress in Nov. all these egregious crimes against the American people will be uncovered and that journalists like Greg Palast will replace the criminal corroborators we currently call 'journalists' in the MSM. They, more than anyone else, could have stopped all this.

for it's significance! Hope this gets more attention - post it again tomorrow if you can.

still can't understand how Congress hasn't done something to control them ~ especially since they've had so many problems ~ such as leaking personal information to con artists, on one occasion, affecting over 300,000 people ~ not to mention their role in the 2000 Election fraud.

I do remember reading what Greg Palast Palast said about the voter purge list, but didn't know about these kinds of companies back then. I've been trying to find out if any of the people who were wrongfully deprived of voting ever sued these guys.

It becomes more and more clear that that election was stolen, with the help of Katherine Harris ~ why do we put up with these crimes?

I think this should be illegal, and Congress is very aware of them, and of the harm they've caused. The more I read, the more I think we lost this country a long time ago ~ :cry:

Choicepoint keeps many databases. Another one they keep is used by the home insurance industry. It's a bit like a credit report on property and property owners. When you apply for home insurance the insurance companies check with Choicepoint to see if there have been prior claims on the property or on the owners, including prior owners. Too many, (a low number) and insurance companies may refuse to issue insurance for a property or owner.

http://realtytimes.com/rtcpages/20030311_homeownersinsurance.htm

Homebuyers: Get a CLUE About Homeowners Insurance
by Michele Dawson

snip> One way to examine the house's claims history is through its CLUE report. About 600 insurers, making up about 90 percent of the market, feed into the CLUE database. The report will show you every claim filed over the past five years.

The database covers 27 types of losses, including dog bites, flood, earthquake, theft, vandalism, wind, and medical payments. You can order an electronic report from Choicepoint, the company that owns the CLUE database, for $12.95 by visiting Choicetrust. <snip

MORE DATA

THey have a product to automate voter registration rolls... why is this important. the only way to peg Diebold data as being inaccurate is how they create phantom voters (or basically manufacture hundreds of thousands of new voters in each state and have them vote, republican of course) and the only way to verify is the physical signature in that old fashioned poll book.

Well choicepoint automates those pollbooks and centralizes the database to one person in the whole state.. worse this is mandated by provisions of HAVA...

SO , worst case scenario has already come to pass.

California (2 I think of their larger counties) have purchased Choicepoint for the voter registration...

that's all she wrote folks... california is now a RED state thanks to these shenanigans...

they're so transparent it makes me sick that no one else sees what's going on...

that they have driver's licences, bank accounts and even Social Security numbers of millions and millions of people ~

USA Today article. They don't mention it by name and perhaps ChoicePoint isn't the only data base they could use but it might be the one they would favor having used it before so successfully.

from the USA TODAY article:

In defending the previously disclosed program, Bush insisted that the
NSA was focused exclusively on international calls. "In other words,"
Bush explained, "one end of the communication must be outside the United
States."

As a result, domestic call records -- those of calls that originate and
terminate within U.S. borders -- were believed to be private.

Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of
billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the
communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street
addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as
part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers
the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to
obtain that information.

Senate hearing investigating security breaches by Choicepoint, which means that Congress knows these people are not to be trusted and that laws were needed to keep up with this technology, but apparently nothing has been done so far!

It's official: ChoicePoint, LexisNexis rooted many times
Thomas C. Greene, The Register 2005-04-14

Privacy invasion behemoths ChoicePoint and LexisNexis have lost control of sensitive data in the past, but deliberately covered it up because no law required them to come clean, executives from both outfits confessed Wednesday during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the recent epidemic of ID theft plaguing the USA.

Numerous past breaches went without notification, ChoicePoint President and COO Douglas Curling admitted under questioning from Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (Republican, Pennsylvania). Curling explained that after notifying the relevant law enforcement authorities, "no one was made aware; law enforcement didn't tell us anything." The ChoicePoint person in contact with law enforcement simply didn't appreciate the importance of the situation, he whinged.

Specter wondered aloud how a company official with enough authority to serve as liaison to law enforcement in such a matter could fail to appreciate its significance and inform others. "I can't explain it," Curling allowed. However, there have been only "45 or 50 breaches," in all, he added.

LexisNexis has also experienced a slew of security breaches followed by a slew of cover-ups, division CEO Kurt Sanford admitted. "All but 4 or 5 of the breaches were due to compromised passwords," he noted.

The Chief Security Officer sends you a form mail with this text:

:kick:

protect people from these data mining companies. Your article says Congress has ~ but as usual, if it benefits the people, it won't happen, not with this Congress.

As far as the ABC poll, I don't believe it, frankly. Every poll I saw recently about the NSA Domestic Spy program and Bush's illegal use of it, was overwhelmingly against it. I remember numbers like 84% against it, just as your article says.

Considering how easy it would be for a company like Choicepoint to identify individuals who vote Republican all the time, what's to stop them from fixing the polls?

Bush's defense of this program this week was to say that the 'American people are not against it' and the next day we get this ABC poll, and the soundbite from the MSM is 'Americans are in favor of NSA program'. Too convenient.

Tice, the whistle-blower from the NSA said that when he testifies before Congress next week, the American people will be shocked. He mentioned Satelite spying on the American people. If they were using the Space program to spy on the American people, I can see why they are so determined to keep it a secret.