Pentagon's "Total Information Awareness" database is step toward police state, Libertarians say

WASHINGTON, DC -- A massive public surveillance system under development by the Pentagon - called "Total Information Awareness" - could help lay the framework for a police state in America and should be halted immediately, Libertarians say.

"This is Big Brother on steroids," said George Getz, Libertarian Party communications director. "The government of a free country shouldn't want surveillance powers like these. And the fact that the government wants them is proof that it shouldn't have them."

The goal of the program, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is to construct a "virtual, centralized, grand database" containing every Americans' electronic transactions, such as credit card purchases, bank and medical records, travel data, e-mails and phone calls. That information is to be linked with biometric data such as face recognition technology and digital fingerprints, and provided instantly to law enforcement to detect patterns of terrorist activity, the government says.

Spearheading the initiative is former Navy Rear Adm. John Poindexter, a Reagan administration official who was implicated in the illegal sale of arms to the Nicaraguan Contras.

As the anti-privacy aspects of the project have become clear, civil liberties groups and editorial pages around the USA have urged Congress to torpedo the program.

"This project sends a message that every American should find repugnant," Getz said. "Namely, that politicians and bureaucrats view America as a sea of criminal suspects whose private behavior must be tracked, catalogued and analyzed, just in case they commit a crime.

"So much for the presumption of innocence and the right to privacy. Just as in totalitarian states, your rights disappear at the whim of a shadowy government employee intent on spawning another database.

"Unless this Orwellian project is dismantled, innocent Americans will suffer under the kind of high-tech, 24-hour surveillance that the Stasi and the KGB would have envied."

Like most counterterrorism measures, Total Information Awareness is based on a myth, Libertarians say - the myth that the only way to prevent terrorism is to erode Americans' freedom.

"But there's already an effective, constitutional way to gather evidence against any criminal suspect: Go to court and get a warrant," Getz said. "Call it Total Constitutional Awareness.

"The fact that terrorists destroyed thousands of lives on September 11 doesn't give politicians the right to destroy the privacy of millions of other innocent individuals. It's time to tell the government: We are citizens, not criminal suspects. Pull the plug on this un-American spy scheme."

-- Braveheart (liberty@freedom.com), November 21, 2002

Answers

Response to Christian would rather support evil for the fear of there children.

Hey Braveheart, the database thing sounds creepy I agee but libertarians are even more frightening. True happiness doesnt come from individual sovereignty over our own life but accpeting Gods love for us and living our lives as God asks us to. Do not place your faith in your constitution like some holy grail, it means little to God. Blessings

The similarities bewteen Satanism "theology" and Ayn Rand is no coincident ;)

-- kiwi (csisherwood@hotmail.com), November 21, 2002.

Response to Christian would rather support evil for the fear of there children.

So, the right to pray in the privicy in your own home and speaking out against cezar isn't a constitutional right ? You forget that those rights came from God and you forget about church states such as Iraq

-- Braveheart (liberty@freedom.com), November 21, 2002.

Response to Christian would rather support evil for the fear of there children.

Anyways I'm not hear to argue, I'm here to warn you, The GOP is corrupt as well as the liberals, theres plently of other partys that aren't corrupt and even may have the views you agree with, the IAP for one such example.

-- Braveheart (liberty@freedom.com), November 21, 2002.

Response to Christian would rather support evil for the fear of there children.

theres plently of other partys that aren't corrupt

HAHAHAHAHA! Thanks. That was a good one.

Dear friend, these problems are not problems that will be solved by governments. Evil regimes, such as existed in Portugal at the beginning of the last century, can simply be washed away; and it can be done without violence or bloodshed. How was this done? The entire Portugese people stood up for what they knew, and they prayed and did pennance. God showed us this could happen, even in the dark 20th century. How many have taken notice? I think perhaps God will ned to "speak" a bit louder.

-- jake (jake1@pngusa.net), November 21, 2002.

Response to Christian would rather support evil for the fear of there children.

While I agree with you that God can solve this, jake, I doubt that He will bother. I doubt God is on our side. America as a whole is morally decadent. We don't deserve the good graces of God. Not that I am saying we should not even try to pray or make penances....we should do that on a daily basis, even if everything were picture perfect. I am just saying that I will not be suprised when, those of us who value our freedoms, will one day have to become another "William Wallace" to protect those freedoms.

Americans have been brainwashed into thinking that because the idea of certain laws are good, then it makes it OK to make that law. Laws such as we have in my state. A school may report a driving aged teenager for failing more than three classes, and that teenagers license would be revoked. A good idea? Of course (I would do it to my own children if they were only failing one class). But the government's place to make that decision? Absolutely not. But many people I have spoke to about this think it's a great law, just because they agree with the principal of it. Not even giving a second thought to the fact that some of their parental rights to make those decisions on their own were just stripped away.

Laws, such as above, that trample on one's parental, personal or privacy rights, are not good laws. And I do believe that many Americans will think that this "Total Information Awareness" to be a good thing, because it will make them feel safer. Again, not giving a second thought to the fact of how many more freedoms they have just lost.

If Americans don't wake up soon, we will lose much more.

"Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be 'cured' against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. But to be punished, however severely, because we have deserved it, because we 'ought to have known better,' is to be treated as a human person made in God's image." --C.S. Lewis

-- Isabel (isabel1492@yahoo.com), November 21, 2002.

Response to Christian would rather support evil for the fear of there children.

That is creepy, Isabel. I posted an article sometime ago concerning the Microchip and how it is already being used in the U.S. Europe is already using it, though I'm not sure if that's the "Mark of the Beast," it is extraodinarily INVASIVE!

Love,

Gail

P.S. Good to hear from you Isabel!

-- Gail (rothfarms@socket.net), November 21, 2002.

Response to Christian would rather support evil for the fear of there children.

Dear Braveheart:
Christians aren't asleep. The U.S. has a system of checks and balances, and maybe soon a re-aligning of priorities will come about.

Meanwhile, another concept comes to mind. We have some frightening things just around the corner, if we don't prepare. I maintain a Christian has a moral right to ''support'' the lesser of two evils. Because sometimes the choice is thrust at us. The lesser in this situation is our liberty. A greater evil than this is total slavery under a militant, warlike enemy. Evil comes in all shapes and sizes. The America you have in mind is the sleepy one, Sir.

-- eugene c. chavez (chavezec@pacbell.net), November 21, 2002.

Response to Christian would rather support evil for the fear of there children.

Whether they deny it or not, I think deep in their minds the faithful know that we at a point of significance.

The office of Total Inf. Awareness is the link I provided as "the eye" on the annuit coeptis thread. I don't think these technological concerns will get too far, or really come to pass before other larger events put them to rest for a time. I do think they are seeds being sown for a time beyond our own, or perhaps within our own time but not of the immediate future... but perhaps will be ressurected, so to speak when that time comes. All in all right now, I don't worry about these things, but I have my finger on the pulse their intentions.

"Dear friend, these problems are not problems that will be solved by governments..."

That whole paragraph is the essence of it.

"True happiness doesnt come from individual sovereignty over our own life but accepting Gods love for us and living our lives as God asks us to."

This is also to the essence.

"The GOP is corrupt as well as the liberals; there's plenty of other parties that aren't corrupt and even may have the views you agree with; the IAP for one such example."

All that looks to the right and to the left all look to the world, to mammon, and to the things that stuff the human with things ideas, even good things, that are 'not-God'. I know this sounds curious, but I stand by it and hope that all understand what I mean to promote, knowing that I myself fall short right and left, literally.

To lean out on the limb a litte further... I can't express enough to anyone anymore, how much of a precipice we are at and how immediate, and what good and terrible things are upon on us. The attack upon the mystical body has been severe, but already the tables are turning and it seems like a day doesn't go by anymore when I don't see some indication of the power of God to call together His own of good will.

I can't avoid the words, night and day, that the ways of men are not the ways of God.

-- Emerald (emerald1@cox.net), November 21, 2002.

Response to Christian would rather support evil for the fear of there children.

"Dear Braveheart: Christians aren't asleep. The U.S. has a system of checks and balances, and maybe soon a re-aligning of priorities will come about."

You mean people break the law and the jury nullify it ?

-- Braveheart (liberty@freedom.com), November 22, 2002.

Response to Christian would rather support evil for the fear of there children.

That is creepy, Isabel. I posted an article sometime ago concerning the Microchip and how it is already being used in the U.S. Europe is already using it, though I'm not sure if that's the "Mark of the Beast," it is extraodinarily INVASIVE!

I totally agree. While we may never know what the "Mark of the Beast" is, this is totally degrading. The idea of a human wanting to monitor another human 24/7 is just sick. It screams with insult. I read an article once how people wanted to start putting these in babies, so parents could keep track of them, or they could track them down if they were kidnapped. Well, I say God's will be done as far as my kids go. I have been a mother for quite some time now, and haven't lost them yet (hard as I may try :) JJ).

I am 100% patriot. But I will stand by the Constitution and not by liberals who twist and distort it. And definitely not by those who would trample on it. While I realize there are flaws in the Constitution, and a Catholic monarchy would be a better form of government, I do believe the founding fathers ideas for equality before God, liberty and justice were noble. And I do think that if a citizen cannot be proud of his country, it would be better he move to a country he can be proud of. Hence, I am proudly an American.

Isabel

P.S. Thanks for the compliment above.

-- Isabel (isabel1492@yahoo.com), November 22, 2002.