William Safire’s column in today’s New York Times raises the hair on my back.
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.
John Markoff also reported on this Total Information Awareness system a few days ago.
“This could be the perfect storm for civil liberties in America,” said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington “The vehicle is the Homeland Security Act, the technology is Darpa and the agency is the F.B.I. The outcome is a system of national surveillance of the American public.”
It’s definitely time to start sending letters to our elected representatives to put a stop to this nonsense. A version of the Homeland Security bill passed the House last night — so our Senators hold the keys over the next few days as to whether this provision survives. Update: I just sent my opinion on how this must be stopped to Senators Boxer and Feinstein.