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Bush's Worst Appointment
Yet?
Read Jeffrey
St Clair's blazing expose of the new Interior Secretary nominee
, Dirk Kempthorne, and make up your own mind. Even in the dingy
history of Idaho's predators, Kempthorne stood proud as the dingiest
of them all. Now he's poised to seize his place in history. Will
he be the sleaziest Interior Secretary in history, sleazier than
Watt, fouler than Fall?
More on the great Israel Lobby debate! Norman Finkelstein cuts
a new path, asks "Are the Neo-Cons really committed Zionists?" "Bliss was it
in that dawn" Not in Michigan! Raymond Garcia describes
Dem governor's appalling plan to scapegoat youth and teachers. Plus the full print version of Virginia
Tilley's savage dissection on this website of the double-standard
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Now!
The recent USA Today revelation that
three major phone companies have (allegedly) been providing phone
call records to the NSA shouldn't come as a shock. Our government
has been seeking to harness maximum data for many years-for all
kinds of purposes, legitimate and illegitimate. As technology
has advanced, so too have the means of harvesting and mining
digital information. Just about everything about anybody or anything
can be datamined by those with the motive, means, and opportunity.
Just who are these people, and who's giving them a license to
delve into our record
Remember back in 2002 when
the U.S. public became aware of the existence of the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and its "Total
Information Awareness" network? The latter was a project
of Admiral John Poindexter, hired by President George W. Bush
to be director of the Information Assurance Office (IAO) of the
DoD's DARPA. The revelation of the existence of this network
caused a stir, but it too should have been no surprise.
Go back to 1996, when John
Poindexter was vice-president of Syntek, a contractor for DARPA,
and he was working on a project called Genoa-a database-mining
software package.
Poindexter has first-rate professional
credentials that signal a first-rate mind: he was at the top
of his class at the U.S. Naval Academy and later earned a Ph.D.
in nuclear physics at Cal Tech. Over the past 15 years, it appears
that his criminal convictions (in 1990, for criminal conspiracy,
obstruction of Congress, and false statements related to the
Iran-Contra scandal) have not been a bar to his work in the most
sensitive areas of intelligence-gathering and synthesis.
Meanwhile, suppose you're a
U.S. newspaper that files a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
request with a federal agency? Too bad! You might not get it--at
least not in time for it to be useful for a breaking story, or
even for a background piece. The situation is so ridiculous that
some investigative reporters aren't even bothering to file FOIA
requests any more.
I have in front of me a letter
from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID),
dated May 9, 2006, which we received on May 16. In it, a Public
Affairs Specialist of the Office of Administrative Services,
writes:
"This letter is in regard
to your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request numbered FOI-XXX/XX,
dated July 24, 2002.
"In an effort to update
our records, we are contacting you regarding your continued interest
in the information you requested. We have encountered some delays
due to our severe backlog and the inundation of requests from
many sources. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have
caused you.
"We are seeking notification
of your continued interest in these documents. If you are no
longer interested in these documents, no further action on your
part is necessary and this request will be closed. If you are
still interested, you are requested to complete the short form
below and return a signed copy of this letter in the enclosed
self-addressed envelope. It must be received within 10 working
days from the date of this letter, [stamped in date] May 23,
2006 [end stamped-in date] otherwise, your case will be considered
closed with no further action on our part."
We had asked for information
for a story we were researching during the summer of 2002. Nearly
four years later, we're being asked if we still want it.
Those who work with DARPA,
IAO, or other alphabet-soup entities can get information about
whoever or whatever they want, with or without a warrant. The
U.S. press, however, may have to wait four years or more to get
information to which they have a legal right--if it can be obtained
at all.
So we have to ask: Total Information
Awareness for whom? Not the press, evidently. Not the American
people, who should be able to rely on the press to tell them
what they need to know. But some people- even a convicted felon
like John Poindexter-why sure! Give them all the access they
want. They're "protecting" us. They're fighting "terrorism."
Well, hello out there, DARPA,
IAO, CIA, NSA, and all the rest of you: newspapers are here to
protect the public too. And, with stories like this one, we are
also fighting terrorism.
NOTE: Privacy International,
which describes itself as "a human rights group formed in
1990 as a watchdog on surveillance and privacy invasions by governments
and corporations," recently granted a "Lifetime Achievement
Award" to ChoicePoint-a private datamining company-citing
it as "an abuser and broker of personal information for
many years now," and charging it with "collecting information
on Americans and foreigners without having to adhere to strict
privacy laws. Recently it has admitted that there have been a
number of fraudulent uses and loss of this personal information.
This resulted in mass apologies, apologies to Congress, and a
CEO bonus of 1.8 million dollars." ChoicePoint's data has
famously been used by some states to "purge" their
voter rolls. Other winners of this organization's (dubious) Lifetime
Achievement Awards have been Osama bin Laden, the National Security
Agency-and Admiral John Poindexter.
CounterPunch
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