Government's pursuit of personal data lives on

The Washington Times ^ | 3-1-04 | Audrey Hudson

[Indy Pendance]

Several federal agencies are using the personal data of U.S. citizens to pinpoint terrorist activity, a practice that a secretive Pentagon program was pursuing before Congress axed its funding amid fears it would be used to spy on Americans.

Congress killed the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness (TIA) project to create a supercomputer and sift through the private information of U.S. citizens, calling it a vast violation of privacy.

[Indy Pendance]

.

[Shermy]

Bump.

Yep, this will stop terrorists...

[Shermy]

Come to think about it, the real value and agenda to this scheme could be to accumulate consumer data, under the guise of national security, and at taxpayer cost, source it back to private companies (hello Wes Clark!), and the private companies will use it for their various marketing purposes.

Makes more sense that way than a purpose to stop some Saudi kid without any American records from getting on a plane.

[John Beresford Tipton]

"I don't like the term 'data mining,' but 'data correlation' I think is probably a more appropriate term," said one Defense Department official."

OR,

Let's put some lipstick on this pig,
and give the citizens a real wet one!

[henderson field]

Anyone who thinks this has anything to do with terrorism has rocks in their head.

[muggs]

Long but interesting article on CAPPS II and Acxiom.

Never Heard Of Acxiom? Chances Are It's Heard Of You

http://www.fortune.com/fortune/subs/article/0,15114,588752-1,00.html

[timestax]

bttt

[mewzilla]

Well, the Census people are asking about everything down to our plumbing fixtures. Maybe this really is about national security.

[timestax]

bttt