From: leonf@perspicuity.net ("Leon")
To: fear-list@mapinc.org, fear-talk@mapinc.org
Cc: mystic@ikansas.com, farmercs@erols.com, ccbennett@webtv.net, kboyd@ipa.net ("Kevin Felkins")
Subject: FEAR: You Are a Suspect (By WILLIAM SAFIRE)
Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 05:14:01 -0600


Folks, we are losing it. Sadly, this is apparently what the public wants. And this is a democracy, after all. 

I think my Bellegarrigue quote tells it all.

Leon
Leon Felkins, FEAR Executive Director
Send mail to: leon@fear.org


"There are no tyrants, there are only slaves." -- Anselme Bellegarrigue


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

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.

Remember Poindexter? Brilliant man, first in his class at the Naval Academy, later earned a doctorate in physics, rose to national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan. He had this brilliant idea of secretly selling missiles to Iran to pay ransom for hostages, and with the illicit proceeds to illegally support contras in Nicaragua.

A jury convicted Poindexter in 1990 on five felony counts of misleading Congress and making false statements, but an appeals court overturned the verdict because Congress had given him immunity for his testimony.

. . .

[Complete article at 
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/14/opinion/14SAFI.html?ex=1037854800&en=3778829e1bec3dc2&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

and at the Liberty Forum,

http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_news&Number=318650

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