HomeSec Blacklist to be Available to Private Companies 315
unassimilatible writes "The Washington Times reports that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are developing a database that will allow private companies to submit lists of individuals to be screened for a connection to terrorism. The database will eventually allow private-sector entities, such as operators of critical infrastructure facilities or organizers of large events, to submit a list of persons associated with those events to the U.S. government to be screened for any nexus to terrorism. All of this won't be cheap either; total terror-related IT spending by US federal and state governments will run past $100 billion in 2004. But don't feel left out Europeans, since the EU is considering a terror database as well, although France and UK are reluctant to share intel."
I hope they give us similar rights as with credit (Score:3, Interesting)
I hate the idea, but I am curious to see what they have on file for me.
Re:I hope they give us similar rights as with cred (Score:2, Interesting)
You'd be amazed at how loose procedures are (Score:3, Interesting)
George Orwell (Score:5, Interesting)
"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."
"In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia."
"Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink."
"The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history."
and, probably my favorite one,
"Winston Churchill could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been at war."
Just thought I'd share...
David Nelsons (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Easy to abuse.. but not a new list anyway. (Score:2, Interesting)
How much do you have to pay to get your favorite "friend " listed ?
Re:Do You Remember? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Easy to abuse.. but not a new list anyway. (Score:5, Interesting)
What this all means is they can't tell terrorists that they're on the list. As such, they would probably have to give false reports of innocence to people who were on the list and did a background check on themselves.
You'll never know you're on their list. It's difficult to find out if you're being watched now, anyways. For example, if your phone was being tapped, the phone company and law enforcement won't let you know you're being watched. And they don't tell you that you're not being watched. They just won't tell you anything. Just the same, you would never be able to find out if you're on the list or you're not.
This already exists (Score:1, Interesting)
See the database of people who seek to dismantle our democracy [wikipedia.org] for yourself. They've even got a picture of a bunch of them standing in a room together.
Great (Score:3, Interesting)
"Well Ms. Jones, you're a very strong candidate and we'd like to hire you, but Homeland Security says you gave money to Earth First! at a fundraiser in 1992. We've offered the position to somebody else. Good luck."
It gets worse (Score:5, Interesting)
Worse than that (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Do You Remember? (Score:5, Interesting)
Years ago, when I lived in the home city of a large multi-national corporation, there was a Green Peace protest. A few GP folk set up shop in town to protest various past and/or present activities of the giant. Seems a local sheriff and the corporation shared some intelligence information while investigating these people. Who they were, who the were known to sleep with, what they ate, etc. A serious gaffe. Heads rolled (probably a few just for appearances) and Green Peace brought their lawyers in (who are no strangers to this sort of thing.) Suits filed, etc. Terribly ugly stuff.
That was then, 20 years ago or so. Now business and government are unabashed about doing something like this. How far we've come.
Safe? Excuse me? (Score:5, Interesting)
Reality doesnt gibe with your charactarization.
You say:
"The so-called "anti-globalization" drummings of a few highly-motivated but ultimately uninformed marchers is neither as significant, nor as threating to "the man" as to warrant the kind of Gestapo tactics you're talking about."
You are wrong and here are my facts to support it. You may or may not be aware of this but during the Miami Free Trade summit they really did use Gestapo tactics and the "the man" certainly felt that the event was threatening.
Here are just a few highlights from the FT summit in Miami:
- Use of undercover "snatch squads". There were groups of plainclothes officers who mingled with the crowd to arrest people without warning.
- Reporters with the corporate news sources were kept behind police lines. Reporters were decked out in full riot gear, like embedded journalists in a war zone.
- Independant journalists, and particularly indymedia reporters, were frequently arrested, or had their video cameras, film, and notepads seized.
- Even the permitted labor march did not escape harassment, as the police turned away several busses full of retired union members from the Alliance of Retired Americans who were trying to travel to the march.
The federal government gave the city of Miami $8.5 million for "anti-terrorism" security at the talks, as part of an $87 billion appropriations bill for the rebuilding of Iraq.Now let me be clear. They used money for the war in Iraq to quash protesters in Miami. I'm a reasonable person and I'm concerned. What on earth makes you think they wouldnt use a system like the one described here to monitor folks with such political views?
RE: Snipers... (Score:3, Interesting)
"...and wounding civilians in Miami, Florida and Washington, DC using paramilitary sniper teams."
Operation Northwoods is a 1962 plan of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff concocted to justify a US military response in Cuba. Among other wonderful things, the US Special Forces would arrange for two-and-three-man "freelance" sniper teams to roam and randomly shoot people at will in order to cause panic and permit the use of the United States military in civilian jurisdictions in clear violation of the United States Constitution (see Posse Commitatus).
Luckily it never happened so...oh...no...wait...
Re:Do You Remember? (Score:3, Interesting)
There is probably a database of people who do so, at least if they are as thorough as the police in Switzerland during the cold war. Apart from members of leftwing parties and environmentalists, etc. they also had a special file with all dairymen and shepherds in the mountains. There were of course "harmless" people in Alpine dairies, which had grown up there and continued what their families had been doing for generations, but there were also people who went there in order to opt out of mainstream civilization, and they were considered a potential threat. To be on the safe side, the police collected data on everyone living in Alpine dairy huts (the files were discovered in the end of the eighties together with the others during a parliamentary investigation).
Re:It CAN happen here. Because it HAS happened her (Score:3, Interesting)
Then make your own choices and take your chances with the fallout from them. Just don't expect me to take the consequences of your choices, too.
And don't say I didn't warn you.
We wouldn't have to rent a clue if you'd provide some real indication that you were offering us one for free. Please provide us that indication. I, for one, would like to get it right.
What you appear to be doing is asking me to identify myself, my family, my friends, and my acquaintences, on a very large and very open forum, and tell you - and everybody listening, potentially including exactly the totally-information-aware security agencies in question - all of our stories about every time some authority figure dumped on us and/or got a bee in his bonnet about one or more of us being the bad guys.
Given that the subject at hand is the way such authority has been used (especially MISused) historically, I trust you'll understand if I decline to hand out such anaecdotal data on a platter. (If nothing else, it wouldn't be consistent with my argument to do so, would it? B-) )
So you'll have to make your own judgements about MY judgement and/or about the underlying problem.
Regarding my judgement: I've made over 1900 slashdot postings under this handle. Look up a few and see what you think.
Regarding external evidence: Follow some of the leads I've given you (like COINTELPRO), or consult any person who has taken postgraduate courses in history.
(Meanwhile, I WILL mention that my handle {Ungrounded Lightning Rod} is a reference to this very issue - and a previous employer's request that his employees, while posting to Usenet, try to avoid becoming lightning rods for controversy that might reflect poorly {sideflash?} on the company. B-) I'm willing to talk about it in person, and I'm not blackmailable by threats to expose a connection between my personal identity and some handle. And I don't encrypt or obfuscate routing on the traffic I use to post, so security agencies can identify me easily if they ever feel like it. I simply make it a policy, when posting under a handle, not to identify myself, or confirm or deny speculation, in an online setting.)
Re:An example of gov't keeping us safe (Score:2, Interesting)
I disclosed everything they asked for, including the name change. They told me that the name change was the reason I was turned down.
I don't blame you for being skeptical -- if it hadn't happened to me, I don't think I would have believed it, either. But it's true.
My now-ex employer told me he wasn't surprised, and that since 9/11 Secrets are a lot harder to get than they used to be. A friend of his who currently has a Secret is now in danger of losing it because his wife is French. Again -- government keeping its priorities straight.
Re:Easy to abuse.. but not a new list anyway. (Score:5, Interesting)
No it is not such a bad question because some groups such as Earth First, some of the anti-abortion activists and some anti-vivisectionists crossed the line long ago. Earth First does things which are very likely to kill people, like spike trees.
There certainly are radical terrorists who champion those causes, the problem is that the line is usually abused. The current UK foreign secretary was under MI5 surveillance when he was a student. So Blair's number one man in the war on terra was once on a blacklist.
I have seen this happen personally in the UK. A group associated with the UK conservative party called the Economic League [guardian.co.uk] maintained a blacklist of 'left wing sympathizers' that they sold to an undisclosed list of employers. I got listed for saying that there was no way I was going to have anything to do with any group that used those tactics. In case people are wondering how privately educated sons of the establishment like myself turn on the tory party like I did, well that was the Damascus moment for me.
You can easily verify this claim further with a small amount of Googling. The list itself collapsed in irrelevance after Bob Maxwell bought a copy and set up a stand at the Labour party conference. There were more Tories on it than left wing radicals. They used to list each other when they got into faction fights.
Given the treatment meeted out to Richard Clarke in the past few days, there is no way that John Ashcroft or George Bush can be trusted with such a power. They are now talking of selectively declassifying intelligence for the sole purpose of being able to punish Clarke with a specious perjury prosecution. They went after Wilson by illegally uncovering the fact that his wife was a covert CIA operative. The continued to threaten O'Niel with prosecutions even after it was admitted that the Whitehouse had cleared all his documents for release.
And you know what? At this point I'm not really sure that Ashcroft's excuse for holding Padilla without indictment or trial is going to turn out to be valid when we find out what it is.
In the past few days Bush has shown more energy and passion in his efforts to crush Clarke than he ever has in his pro-forma attempts to track down and eliminate al Qaeda. I simply cannot believe that any other major party candidate in that race on either side would not have invaded Afghanistan to destroy al Qaeda and stayed there focused on that single task until it was complete. Forbes, Keyes, Gore, Bradley, I can't believe a single one would not have invaded (they would have been impeached anyway so it would not matter) and I can't believe any other candidate would have finished the job.
Washington Times owned by Sun Myung Moon (Moonies) (Score:2, Interesting)