ACLU report: U.S. heading toward Big Brother society

ACLU Report via Drudge via the Herald Tribune ^ | Article published Jan 15, 2003 | Editor: David Kravets

[vannrox]

This is a printer friendly version of an article from www.heraldtribune.com
To print this article open the file menu and choose Print.

---

Article published Jan 15, 2003
ACLU report: U.S. heading toward Big Brother society

Spurred by loosened legal standards following the 2001 terrorist attacks, the United States is evolving into a Big Brother society as technology advances and surveillance grows, the American Civil Liberties Union warned in a report released Wednesday.

The report, titled "Bigger Monster, Weaker Chains: The Growth of an American Surveillance Society," says Americans' privacy and liberty are at risk.

"A combination of lightning-fast technological innovations and the erosion of privacy protections threatens to transform Big Brother from an oft-cited but remote threat into a very real part of American life," the report says.

The report is a wide-ranging briefing on technology, privacy rules and new laws being employed in the government's war on terrorism.

"The reasonable expectation of privacy has been dramatically diminished," Barry Steinhardt, an ACLU director, said in an interview.

The report says a growing "surveillance monster" is emerging in which the private and the public sector are monitoring Americans with video cameras to the extent that it is becoming almost impossible to walk the streets of major cities without being filmed.

Yet there are virtually no rules governing what is allowed to be done with those tapes, like employing face-recognition technology to investigate and identify people.

Also, computer chips used for motorists' tollbooth speed passes might one day be used on identification cards to allow police officers to "scan your identification when they pass you on the street," the report says.

The study points to the Total Information Awareness pilot project, in which the Pentagon is seeking to maintain a database of Americans' medical, health, financial, tax and other records. Yet there are few privacy laws to prevent businesses from selling the government such information, Steinhardt said.

"If we do not act to reverse the current trend, data surveillance - like video surveillance - will allow corporations or the government to constantly monitor what individual Americans do every day," the report says.

Moreover, under the Patriot Act, the anti-terrorist legislation passed by Congress immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, the government can demand that libraries turn over reading habits of patrons. Authorities can more easily attain telephone and computer wiretaps, and conduct searches in secret without immediately notifying the target.

Viet Dinh, an assistant U.S. attorney general and one of the government's spokesmen on security topics, said in a recent interview that the Bush administration would not abuse these far-reaching powers.

"I think security exists for liberty to flourish and liberty cannot exist without order and security," Dinh said.

New rules, the report notes, reinstate the FBI's ability to spy on Americans even when no crime is suspected and allows authorities to share with prosecutors information obtained via search warrants granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. Under FISA court rules, Americans are not protected by the bread-and-butter legal standard of probable cause - prosecutors need only say the search will assist a terror probe.

"It is not just the reality of government surveillance that chills free expression and the freedom that Americans enjoy," the report says. "The same negative effects come when we are constantly forced to wonder whether we might be under observation."

---

On the Net:

Read the report at:

---

Editors: David Kravets has been covering state and federal courts for a decade.

---

[vannrox]

During the Clinton Administration the ACLU denied that we were heading toward a 1984 style society. Now, suddenly we are under a Bush administration. Sounds politically motovated, even though I agree with their appraisal.

[Support Free Republic]

Donate, Or Snuggles The Fabric Softener Bear Gets It!
	Donate Here By Secure Server Or mail checks to FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794 or you can use PayPal at Jimrob@psnw.com
STOP BY AND BUMP THE FUNDRAISER THREAD

[That Subliminal Kid]

I think this is hysterical really. What do these idiots expect with the pathetic excuse for a school system we have today? Liberals that run these monoliths of indoctrination marginalize American history and American ideals of individual freedom, and they push pseudo-moralistic values and ethics spawned from their post-1960's leftwing ideology. It should come as no surprise to anyone paying any attention at all that most Americans are becoming increasingly unaware and unconcerned about threats to their rights and privacy. Look for this trend to continue until Civil War II.

[dirtboy]

The study points to the Total Information Awareness pilot project, in which the Pentagon is seeking to maintain a database of Americans' medical, health, financial, tax and other records. Yet there are few privacy laws to prevent businesses from selling the government such information, Steinhardt said.

I think the ACLU needs to better understand what TIA is planned to be. With the currently available data on consumers, a direct-response outfit is still lucky to get a two-percent response rate for a mailing - which means that the government simply will not be able to achieve its objectives with currently available data. What Poindexter envisions would require every business in the country to capture details of each transaction and transmit that information to TIA - a modest undertaking (sarcasm) that would require reprogramming every point of sale system in the country. The ACLU, like many other people, simply don't properly understand the underlying issue here - they believe there is already all this ultra-powerful information available, when direct-response firms fail over 98 percent of the time in identifying potential customers.

[JennysCool]

I think "Big Mother" is more apt here ... We're getting into a society where the operative viewpoint is, "You'll put your eye out with that!"

[ZULU]

They are right. Big brother IS here.

Want to own a gun?? Can't do that.

Forget to buckle up a seat-belt?? You're in trouble.

Have a toilet that flushes too much water?? Yup, big brother is there alright.

Say something in private to somebody about any ethnic group and inadvertantly get overheard??? You lose your job.

Yeah. The ACLU IS right. Big Brother IS here - but their liberal buddies helped put him there.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Of course it is politically motivated. They would have absolutely no problem with the current plan if it had be a Rat Congress that passed it and a Rat in control of the various new goobermint agencies.

But they are right.

[Sam Cree]

"their liberal buddies helped put him there."

It is funny, the ACLU is always going on about individual rights and the sanctity of the Constitution, yet they wholeheartedly support the Democrats and all the leftist programs and philosophies that are taking over the country.

It's as if their purpose is to undermine our freedoms in the name of our Constitution.

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[2banana]

The ACLU never heard of and will never support the 2nd Amendment...

But they will fight to the death for a teenager to have an abortion without any religion to influence her in school...

[Viva Le Dissention]

What, so you shouldn't support them because they have a bad viewpoint on one issue?

I'm a member of Gun Owners of America, and I'm a member of the ACLU. Sure, I'd like it if the ACLU were a little tougher on gun rights, but they're not--hey, neither is the NRA, while we're at it.

That aside, the ACLU does a nice job of keeping the government *somewhat* in check, and that's worthy of support, as far as I'm concerned.

[elbucko]

I think "Big Mother" is more apt here ..

Funny, good point. The ACLU will actually tolerate a "Big Brother" system that tracks conservatives, as shown during the Clinton years.

[2banana]

The ACLU:

Never heard or read of the founding fathers
Believes partial birth abortions are a right enumerated in the constitution
Believes the constitution is a "living" document
Never saw a gun law it didn't like
Thinks religion is evil

They are the sue-the-bastards-with-taxfree-money arm of the democrat party.

[George W. Bush]

Hopefully, this is a sign that the ACLU is actually awakening to the real threats to civil liberties posed currently instead of playing the role of handmaiden of the hard Left.

It's about time they start doing some real civil liberties work, support gun rights, get out of the abortion and sodomy rights battles which have become their trademark. And they need to forget about hounding religion out of the schools and 10 Commandments plaques out of the courthouses.

There is a serious and credible threat to the American constitution due to the modern information age. The threat is the use of information collection systems to completely eliminate privacy and anonymity, both of which are substantial components of meaningful civil liberties.

I certainly don't trust Ridge or Poindexter's TIA. It's overdue for the ACLU to return to broad and practical civil rights agenda.

[eshu]

I certainly don't trust Ridge or Poindexter's TIA. It's overdue for the ACLU to return to broad and practical civil rights agenda.

agreed

[George W. Bush]

Sure, I'd like it if the ACLU were a little tougher on gun rights, but they're not--hey, neither is the NRA, while we're at it.

I was ACLU too many years ago before they became such a political arm of the Democrat party. Unfortunately, the ACLU will generally oppose anything the GOA is doing. So your GOA membership may offset the ACLU's anti-gun activities but your support of ACLU forwards the Left agenda on a far broader front.

Also, remember that being a member of some of these organizations is politically useful to them. Their political muscle is often determined by the number of members they can claim. So even if your membership to the ACLU is nominal, it's worth something politically just to have you on their rolls.

As far as ACLU internal politics go, I've considered before that a concerted conservative effort in rural states could allow gunlovers to completely take over entire state ACLU chapters and turn them pro-gun, anti-sodomy, anti-abortion. One would then have the imprimateur of ACLU but actually be a rightwing civil liberties organization. Naturally, a portion of the dues would still go to the national ACLU but you could file your own amicus briefs and use the ACLU name to make splashy press releases and spread pro-gun propaganda.

The kinds of states where you could accomplish this with, say, 2,000-10,000 rightwingers would be states like Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Utah, Idaho.

Of course, their lawyers might quit. But you could still use it as a propaganda arm and prevent a rightwing-dominated state ACLU from being an active arm and propaganda mill for the Left.

[ohioman]

The ACLU is as relevant as the League of Nations and will also find itself on the dustbins of history. We should hate this organization as much as we hate the Islamo-fascists.

[Auntie Dem]

It's as if their purpose is to undermine our freedoms in the name of our Constitution.

BINGO! We have a winner, no more calls please.

Johnny, tell our contestant what they have won.

You have won an autographed copy of "Our Living Constitution", the almost top-selling novelette written by Imno Framer.

;^)

[ZULU]

It is their purpose. They are an un-American subversive organization.

Sometimes they are right ( nobody can be wrong 100% of the time), but their ultimate goal appears to be the entire dismantlement and reconstruction of American society into some kind of freakish society the Founding Fathers never envisioned.