GREG PALAST - The Spies Who Shagged US - A MUST READ

Written for Buzzflash...

Oh, how deep the rabbit hole goes...

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/06/05/con06189.html

<snip>
"I first ran across these guys in 2000 in Florida when our Guardian/BBC team discovered the list of 94,000 "felons" that Katherine Harris had ordered removed from Florida's voter rolls before the election. Virtually every voter purged was innocent of any crime except, in most cases, Voting While Black. Who came up with this electoral hit list that gave Bush the White House? ChoicePoint, Inc.

And worse, they KNEW the racially-tainted list of felons was bogus. And when we caught them, they lied about it. While they've since apologized to the NAACP, ChoicePoint's ethnic cleansing of voter rolls has been amply assuaged by the man the company elected.

And now ChoicePoint and George Bush want your blood. Forget your phone bill. ChoicePoint, a sickened executive of the company told us in confidence, "hope to build a database of DNA samples from every person in the United States …linked to all the other information held by CP " from medical to voting records.

And ChoicePoint lied about that too. The company publicly denied they gave DNA to the Feds -- but then told our investigator, pretending to seek work, that ChoicePoint was "the number one" provider of DNA info to the FBI."

or is it Majority Report?

Don't usually request that for my own posts - but this is a REALLY good article

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x210044

..."if you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about."

I can't count the number of times I've heard that line from grown adults who should know better.

I was catching up on some tech news on News.com and notice that the forums there were having a hot debate on the NSA phonecall database debacle. It didn't take long before the old "innocent people don't have to worry" mantra was trotted out. Here's a post from some koolade-drinking Constitutional scholar:

"Ok first for everyone that says it is illegal, do some home work. The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) allows the federal government to obtain these records and for all you who hate Bush...this law was passed by Bill Clinton and the Democratic Congress. So you can put aside your 4th ammendment argument once and for all. And yes I know if the NSA discovers a crime they are required to report it....again, I have done nothing illegal, then I don't have to worry now do I. You proved my point exactly, so to your point it is only illegal if you get caught, is that what you are saying?"

Notice how he even manages to blame Clinton and the Democratic Congress for it, too!

More inanities (and the occasional sane comment) can be found at:

http://news.com.com/Bush+defends+spy+program+after+new+disclosure/2100-1028_3-6071255.html?tag=nefd.pulse

connecting the dots for us. Thanks Greg.

:wtf: Has everyone become f*cking illiterate??? Sheesh! Kill it before it spreads!

is there, their and they're, used sometimes interchangeably.

From someone like Greg Palast, however, I'd expect better.

....scares the crap out of me. What part of the government wants all your personal information and the personal information of your kids too don't people get???

I was a huge fan of Chris Carter's "X-Files" back in the early 90's. Sometimes it takes my breath away how that guy almost seemed to foresee the incredible government abuses that are now becoming reality.

Two of the iconic images of that show were the big file room behind the locked door in the Pentagon basement and the dark mine tunnels in the West Virginia hillside -- both filled with long, long rows of filing cabinets containing records, including tissue samples, of millions and millions of Americans.

ChoicePoint don't need no steenking filing cabinets. They have DNA analysis, and computers.

:scared:

in the guise of antifascism. We so love the rhetoric of liberty that only a tyrant who talks endlessly of freedom and democracy can ever take freedom and democracy away from us. I'm not sure Bush himself wants to take them away per se; he just wants them pared down to a manageable size so the people don't get in the way of his lootery.

Their personal information is public, right? As public as yours or mine? I guess none of THEM ever worry that the "wrong" people might find out more about them than they might find, um, comfortable?

The scary thing about all this is that a R-controlled firm is teaming up with an R-controlled NSA/Congress to do the datamining collating offshore in the Bahamas thru Global Information Group, Ltd., Ben H. Bell, IIIrd's company.

Damn!

:cry:

Add Real ID's focus on rfid inclusion with biometric data into this mix and it paints an even nastier and more pervasive picture.

Must read.

NOT! Folks, there is no going back now. This country is G O N E!

<snip>

The leader in the field of what is called "data mining," is a company, formed , called, "ChoicePoint, Inc," which has sucked up over a billion dollars in national security contracts.

Worried about Dick Cheney listening in Sunday on your call to Mom? That ain't nothing. You should be more concerned that they are linking this info to your medical records, your bill purchases and your entire personal profile including, not incidentally, your voting registration. Five years ago, I discovered that ChoicePoint had already gathered 16 billion data files on Americans -- and I know they've expanded their ops at an explosive rate.

They are paid to keep an eye on you -- because the FBI can't. For the government to collect this stuff is against the law unless you're suspected of a crime. (The law in question is the Constitution.) But ChoicePoint can collect if for "commercial" purchases -- and under the Bush Administration's suspect reading of the Patriot Act -- our domestic spying apparatchiks can then BUY the info from ChoicePoint.

Who ARE these guys selling George Bush a piece of you?

ChoicePoint's board has more Republicans than a Palm Beach country club. It was funded, and its board stocked, by such Republican sugar daddies as billionaires Bernie Marcus and Ken Langone -- even after Langone was charged by the Securities Exchange Commission with abuse of inside information.

:nuke:

CSI has to be the hottest property on TV. Add in all the other crime shows, spy shows, terrorist fighting shows and every night Americans watch stories where brave law enforcement officials catch nasty criminals by matching dna samples they've collected to some database. We also see how disappointed these officials are when they can't get a match because the database is incomplete.

We are being set up to feel good about this kind of data collection.

What gets me is that the government is SO incompetent, it will never manage this information in a productive way (not that they should be collecting it to begin with)!

Using the cover of CAPPS II, the Total Information Awareness program has shifted offshore and been outsourced to Global Information Group, Ltd., in the Bahamas,

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36853-2004Oct15.html

where it is obvious that ChoicePoint's Repbulican agenda of accessing total US citizen information out of the reach of any kind of oversight is being done. The data, mined offshore, is accessable to mergeing those phone log numbers with actual data fields.

Where is the 'warrant' for Total Information Awareness ? ChoicePoint's database, combined with an NSA front company offshore, is the intelligence version of DreamLand/Area51, just offshore in the Bahamas. Spooks in S. Florida can just take the boat, or, like in Vegas, take a quick plane trip to the worksite.

recommended

He's one of the best of the best!

Thanks for this info...