My friends
As Granny D Hardwick--the 92 year old peace pioneer who walked across the US in 1999-2000 in pursuit of campaign finance reform--said in September, the great divide in the US is NOT between conservatives and liberals; it is between the politically aware and the hypnotized. Thursday's NY Times op/ed column by William Safire--a politically aware conservative--shows that nowadays the circle meets and we are together as we fight to make this country what it says it is...a democracy.
Do you think it's a fluke that the Bush Administration's latest scare-campaign about an imminent terrorist attack has come RIGHT NOW, as their Homeland Security Bill is before Congress? Don't let them get away with it!
Please take the time to read this email through to the end, and ACT, for without action, awareness is worthless. The House has already rolled over and played dead, but don't let the Senate do the same! We must flood our Senators' offices with emails, faxes, letters, phone calls and visits. Don't let this atrocious Homeland Security Act pass without a HUGE public outcry. Forward this email or do whatever you can to let folks know what is happening. DON'T GIVE UP!
in outraged protest
Patricia Lay-Dorsey
************************************
"You Are A Suspect"
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
New York Times
November 14, 2002
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. He famously asserted, "The buck stops here," arguing that the White House staff, and not the president, was responsible for fateful decisions that might prove embarrassing.
This ring-knocking master of deceit is back again with a plan even more scandalous than Iran-contra. He heads the "Information Awareness Office" in the otherwise excellent Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which spawned the Internet and stealth aircraft technology. Poindexter is now realizing his 20-year dream: getting the "data-mining" power to snoop on every public and private act of every American.
Even the hastily passed U.S.A. Patriot Act, which widened the scope of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and weakened 15 privacy laws, raised requirements for the government to report secret eavesdropping to Congress and the courts. But Poindexter's assault on individual privacy rides roughshod over such oversight.
He is determined to break down the wall between commercial snooping and secret government intrusion. The disgraced admiral dismisses such necessary differentiation as bureaucratic "stovepiping." And he has been given a $200 million budget to create computer dossiers on 300 million Americans.
When George W. Bush was running for president, he stood foursquare in defense of each person's medical, financial and communications privacy. But Poindexter, whose contempt for the restraints of oversight drew the Reagan administration into its most serious blunder, is still operating on the presumption that on such a sweeping theft of privacy rights, the buck ends with him and not with the president.
This time, however, he has been seizing power in the open. In the past week John Markoff of The Times, followed by Robert O'Harrow of The Washington Post, have revealed the extent of Poindexter's operation, but editorialists have not grasped its undermining of the Freedom of Information Act.
Political awareness can overcome "Total Information Awareness," the combined force of commercial and government snooping. In a similar overreach, Attorney General Ashcroft tried his Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS), but public outrage at the use of gossips and postal workers as snoops caused the House to shoot it down. The Senate should now do the same to this other exploitation of fear.
The Latin motto over Poindexter"s
new Pentagon office reads "Scientia Est Potentia" -- "knowledge is power."
Exactly: the government's infinite knowledge about you is its power over
you. "We're just as concerned as the next person with protecting privacy,"
this brilliant mind blandly assured The Post. A jury found he spoke falsely
before.
------------------------------------
Copyright The New York Times
Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/14/opinion/14SAFI.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
======================================================
"House Considers Jailing Hackers For Life"
By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
November 13, 2002, 5:57 PM
PT
<http://news.com.com/2100-1001-965750.html>
WASHINGTON--A last-minute addition to a proposal for a Department of Homeland Security would punish malicious computer hackers with life in prison.
The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday evening voted 299 to 121 to approve the bill, which would reshape large portions of the federal bureaucracy into a new department combining parts of 22 existing federal agencies, including the Secret Service, the Coast Guard, and the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center.
During closed-door negotiations before the debate began, the House Republican leadership inserted the 16- page Cyber Security Enhancement Act (CSEA) into the Homeland Security bill. CSEA expands the ability of police to conduct Internet or telephone eavesdropping without first obtaining a court order, and offers Internet providers more latitude to disclose information to police.
In July, the full House approved CSEA by a 385-to-3 vote, but it died in the Senate. By inserting CSEA into the Homeland Security bill, the measure's backers are hoping for a second chance before Congress adjourns for the holidays.
"Defending against terrorists who can strike any time with any method requires a change in our approach to the problem," CSEA sponsor Rep. Lamar Smith said in a statement. "We need a new government structure with a clear focus and clear mission to protect Americans and increase public safety. The new Department of Homeland Security will fulfill that vital role."
Earlier this year, Smith said: "Until we secure our cyberinfrastructure, a few keystrokes and an Internet connection is all one needs to disable the economy and endanger lives. A mouse can be just as dangerous as a bullet or a bomb." Smith heads a subcommittee on crime, which held hearings that drew endorsements of CSEA from a top Justice Department official and executives from Microsoft and WorldCom.
Citing privacy concerns, civil liberties groups have objected to portions of CSEA.
"There are a lot of different things to be concerned about, but preserving Fourth Amendment and wiretap standards continues to be a critical test of Congress' commitment of civil liberties," Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said Wednesday.
Rotenberg said that CSEA makes "ISPs more closely aligned with law enforcement interests than customer confidentiality interests. It may not be surprising, but it's not good news."
Democratic members of Congress said during Wednesday evening's floor debate that the Department of Homeland Security bill had been rushed to the floor without everyone having a chance to read it. They did not complain specifically about CSEA, which has already been approved near-unanimously by the House.
"We were given a massive new bill this morning that is being rushed through the House with no opportunity for debate," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. "I doubt more than 10 people in Congress know (what's) in the bill."
House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, replied by saying: "There seems to be a concern that the bill is being rushed to the floor...This was not rushed to the floor. We worked hard on it. We worked together on it."
What CSEA does if approved by the Senate and signed by the president, who has called for a Department of Homeland Security, the law would:
* Promise up to life terms for computer intrusions that "recklessly" put others' lives at risk. A committee report accompanying the legislation predicts: "A terrorist or criminal cyberattack could further harm our economy and critical infrastructure. It is imperative that the penalties and law enforcement capabilities are adequate to prevent and deter such attacks."
* Permit limited surveillance without a court order when there is an "ongoing attack" on an Internet- connected computer or "an immediate threat to a national security interest." That kind of surveillance would, however, be limited to obtaining a suspect's telephone number, IP address, URLs or e-mail header information--not the contents of online communications or telephone calls. Under federal law, such taps can take place when there's a threat of "serious bodily injury to any person" or activity involving organized crime.
* Change current law, which says it's illegal for an Internet provider to "knowingly divulge" what users do except in some specific circumstances, such as when it's troubleshooting glitches, receiving a court order or tipping off police that a crime is in progress. CSEA expands that list to include when "an emergency involving danger of death or serious physical injury to any person requires disclosure of the information without delay."
* Specify that an existing ban on the "advertisement" of any device that is used primarily for surreptitious electronic surveillance applies to online ads. The prohibition now covers only a "newspaper, magazine, handbill or other publication."
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