Lonewacko Action Alert

This article is truly scary:

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.

While instapundit and others agree this must be stopped, this issue doesn't seem to be getting anywhere the attention it deserves.

Some dismiss it as black helicopter talk, or say it's not feasible, or say "I have nothing to hide." Like Reply 7 at the link above: "You know what? I don't give a da%n if such surveillance catches even one terrorist before he kills a single American!".

Others thankfully provide Ben Franklin's chestnut "A people who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither."

I strongly suggest you contact your representatives and voice your displeasure.

There's some background info here.

Those far left of Safire are as worried as he is.

The headline of this article is a classic.

A visit to DARPA's IAO page is informative. Not just for you, but for them as well. But, I digress.

It contains the following line, which I have edited for your viewing pleasure:

"It is difficult to counter the threat that the bogeyman pose. Currently, the bogeyman are able to move freely throughout the world..." Just insert whatever is today's bogeyman, and you've got today's rationalization of the loss of liberties.

The line "novel methods for populating the database from existing sources, create innovative new sources" here is interesting.

But, hey, all of it is interesting, in a kind of Orwell's worst nightmare kinda way.

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