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Pentagon to Track American Consumer Purchases? 91

Posted by timothy from the don't-worry-ma'am dept.
Anonymous Nerd writes "I was looking at Fox News today and came accross this gem of a story . It seems the Pentagon wishes to create a massive database of every transaction made in America. I wonder how they plan to track purchases made with cash?"
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Pentagon to Track American Consumer Purchases? More

Pentagon to Track American Consumer Purchases?

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  • I know... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CptNoSkill ( 528594 ) <skajoshaj@h o t m a i l .com> on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @04:35PM (#4718315) Homepage Journal
    I wonder how they plan to track purchases made with cash?

    Outlaw cash transactions..... Credit Card/Debit from now on only.. or else the terrrorist have won (tm).

    (just a joke...)
    • Super-saving Dillons/King Soopers cards that give the cardholder a discount. Free to get the card, but will track all purchases made.
      • Yeah, that's why you fill out all fake information, or don't fill any out at all. I have several of these cards, and never once fill them out truthfully. Also, I try to get a new one every few months just to confuse their data further. Tommy Chong has roughly 30 King Sooper's cards in Denver alone :)

    • Re:I know... (Score:5, Funny)

      by L. VeGas ( 580015 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @06:56PM (#4719622) Homepage Journal
      I wonder how they plan to track purchases made with cash?

      Precisely why from now on I will NEVER use my credit card when making crack purchases.
      • Precisely why from now on I will NEVER use my credit card when making crack purchases.

        But if you don't use your credit card, you're missing out on the Cash Back! And the Bonus Miles!

        Why get just crack, when you could earn credit towards a trip to Bolivia?
    • Actually I've heard noises from on high about a plan to eventually replace all paper currency with metallic currency. Sure, it's probably a fanciful fiction, but if the highest value of coin you can carry is $1.00, then getting your paycheck in "Cash" is going to be rather extreme.

    • Re:I know... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by BitterOak ( 537666 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @10:47PM (#4720722)
      I wonder how they plan to track purchases made with cash?

      Simple. Require that an I.D. (such as a driver's license) be presented when making cash purchases. This will be done in the name of preventing counterfeiting.

    • No more cash (Score:5, Informative)

      by perfessor multigeek ( 592291 ) <pmultigeek@@@earthlink...com> on Friday November 22, 2002 @12:14AM (#4729372) Homepage Journal
      I wonder how they plan to track purchases made with cash?
      Outlaw cash transactions.
      I wish that that were actually funny. I'm assuming that we'll start to see just that, with certain types of purchases (such as airline tickets) only being allowed through some electronically trackable means. This administration means business and they have repeatedly shown that they are entirely willing to do things that would have been dismissed as ludicrous less then a year ago.
      Yeah, yeah, "Good for all debts public and private". Whatever. Stop thinking that your standards are theirs or, in fact, that illegality or irrationality make something impossible.
      The Homeland (yeah, right) Security Act has plenty of provisions that most of us would dismiss out of hand in any other context.
      The White House is very, very serious indeed and they are the progeny of Iran-Contra, the Watergate break ins, and a hundred other proofs that, yes, they can get away with it.
      No games anymore, folks. Simulation is over and this is certainly not a drill.
      So, any estimates on how soon they go after any successor to Beanz and the like for being too transferrable and not trackable enough? Any predictions on how many anonymizers for purchases we're going to see? Since credit card anonymizers for porn are under attack [nytimes.com] the game is already under way.

      I predict a system cropping up where you can walk into a storefront and buy a "corporate credit card" with an anonymous name or equivalent and a predeposited balance. Say, a $500 card made out to Joe Foobar with a confirmable balance. Use up the balance and either throw it away or go to any branch and put more cash into this identity. No questions, no ID needed, no fuss, no muss. I'm betting that one of the pawn shop companies currently going national (there are several) will get into this and that they will start having spammer-style constant swapping to new Visa or MCd providers. I'll also bet that this will become illegal within three years and keep existing under a succession of forms. Further, I'll bet that we're going to start seeing a serious increase in Americans with foreign bank accounts that come with credit cards. Sure, I've got a Visa; Bank of Rome, thank you very much.
      Yes, cyberpunk is ever more real by the day and I fucking HATE IT. But I'm not going to be stupid enough to deny that it is happening.
      Rustin

      • After searching online for about an hour after reading your post, I discovered a couple things:

        1. Legitimate offshore credit card accounts are all secured. You put your money down, usually 1.5 times your credit limit, pay a processing fee of hundreds of dollars, suffer a brutal interest rate and fee structure and generally wait many months for your secured deposit to return to you upon closing the account.

        2. There are many unsecured (no deposit necessary) credit card offers, but they're illegitmate, fraudulant, multi-level marketing scams, etc. International banks will not issue an unsecured card to non-citizens of their country.

        3. Internet only credit card accounts are an option. They've got fees, high rates, etc., but offer anonymity. kind of a more accepted PayPal.

        For the sake of privacy, it seems quite difficult to obtain an offshore credit card without spending a lot of money, making such options attractive only to the paranoid, rich or criminals. Thus, like gun control, where most crimes are committed with stolen guns, most terrorists would likely pay the fees and go with offshore accounts if there was government tracking.

        --gary

  • A way to tax internet transactions!
    Yeeeeeehaw!

  • Cash? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 3-State Bit ( 225583 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @04:38PM (#4718336)
    What are you, a terrorist?

  • Actually (Score:4, Funny)

    by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @04:41PM (#4718366) Journal
    I don't have that big a problem with that, providing all the politicians get their transactions logged and screened as well. That'll probably clean up a lot of problems...

    (I also pay in cash alot, so nyeh!)
    =Smidge=

  • If you really oppose this law (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eXtro ( 258933 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @04:42PM (#4718377) Homepage
    then the right thing isn't necessarily to pay cash, or barter or start your own currency. Jam there databases with useless information. Buy paper towels and toilet paper with cash, subscribe to 2600 with your credit card. Leaving no trace isn't realistic for most people, even if you only use cash chances are you withdrew that cash from a bank, or a bank cashed your check. Instead concentrate on leaving a wide swath of purchases that indicate you're a "subversive" for them to discover when they mine their data.

    • yeah, I'm already gettin into the habit of paying cash anyway, since stuff from shops like "UK Hydroponic Systems" might look a little questionable.

      Maybe I'll buy some mundane stuff like helal meat [cos its nice, I'm not religious] , wholesale fertiliser, petrol [gasoline], small electrical bits, etc., on my card, cos they wouldn't get in a twist about that sorta stuff, right? ;-)

      Ali

    • Re:If you really oppose this law (Score:5, Insightful)

      by adb ( 31105 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @04:57PM (#4718529)

      I agree that that's what you should do if you want to practice civil disobedience by encouraging them to spy on you for no good reason. I don't agree that that's what you should do if you want practical privacy.

      Observe the following technique:

      • Get direct deposit from work. (Ooo! Scary! Electro-trail!)
      • Pay your fixed bills (for me, that's rent, DSL, and the phone line that the telco monopoly requires me to have in order to get DSL from Speakeasy) in the same way every month.
      • Always withdraw all the rest of your money in cash and do whatever you like with it.
      • Always give Radio Shack a new false name and address. Be creative.
      • Every time you go to the stupormarket to buy some stupor, fill out the form for a new magic discount card, then give it to a random stranger wrapped in a religious pamphlet.
      • Oh god, I already don't care about this post.

      And then gosh, they can't track your actual purchases. They can still decide that you're one of those freaks who deals in cash and needs spying on, but there's no way to avoid that judgement unless you either don't work or work under the table, and there's likely to be too many of those to practically spy on quite yet anyway.

      • You make being subversive sound like so much work.

        I cannot possibly be as subversive as someone that has all day to spend thinking about it - we need someone out there to be subversive for us, someone that we can fund to add noise to the system.

        Who volunteers to paint a target on their head?

        • Lazy, lazy (Score:3, Insightful)

          by adb ( 31105 )
          I'm a big fan of the "cash your whole paycheck (after paying rent and bills), stick it in your pocket, and fritter it away on amusements" school of money management. Oddly enough, this makes me relatively hard to track this way. The shit about Radio Shack and the stupormarket was just gratuituituitous.
      • Just for the record, the proper protocol is to always give them the name Jonathon Shade, but use a fake address.

        1060 West Addison St, Chicago, IL 60613 [yahoo.com] is one of my favorites.

        Try this when you can get a good look at the screen and see how many different "Jonathon Shade"s come up in their database.

        Really. Go on. Try it.
        • "Anybody with that kind of record is gonna make a mistake. I want all party members in the tri state district to monitor the city, county and state police on their CB. Mr. Shade is gonna fuck up. And when he does, he'd better pray the police get to him before we do."
    • My mother and I swapped our "fly-buys" cards but that just meant that I got the "Buy a New Car" (snail-mail) spam because she bought petrol. I don't have a licence.

      Putting fake data in these databases is pointless, because no one ever notices except you.

    • subscribe to 2600 with your credit card

      I already do subscribe to 2600 with my CC, and fuck them if they don't like it. When it becomes 'subversive' in the US to subscribe to a magazine that I can walk into Barnes & Noble or the neighborhood newsstand and pay cash for, something is seriously wrong in this country.

  • Duplicate (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Krelnik ( 69751 ) <`moc.gnirpsdnim' `ta' `yelrafmit'> on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @04:43PM (#4718387) Homepage Journal
    This was already reported on slashdot [slashdot.org] eleven days ago, though the link in this one seems to work better.

    • Re:Duplicate (Score:2, Informative)

      by WayTooOldForThis ( 628083 )
      Krelnik is right, of course. And this is no joke. It's a huge (anti-)civil liberties story.

      At the 11th hour the proposal got tacked on to the Homeland Security bill about to clear Congress, despite vocal protests from parties ranging from the EFF to William Safire.

      It's too late to stop this from becoming law now. To borrow a phrase from LBJ, this bill is going through Congress like a dose of salts through a widow-woman.

  • kuro5hin (Score:4, Interesting)

    by capoccia ( 312092 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @04:45PM (#4718398) Journal
    see also the "Scientia Est Potentia" ("Knowledge Is Power") [kuro5hin.org] article at kuro5hin.org. It's been there for two days already. It covers the same story, but without the anonymous coward troll comments.

  • How soon before the aggregated data gets to... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dpilot ( 134227 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @04:46PM (#4718407) Homepage Journal
    The IRS? Wouldn't this be a good one in tracking down tax evaders.

    Ordinary law enforcement? Obviously someone with any sort of transaction at a known head-shop must be handling illegal drugs.

    Deranged crackers? After all, it's aggregated data, and could be useful for stalking, or other purposes.

    Terrorist crackers? Find themselves, learn how they were found. Teach the next batch how to avoid those mistakes.

    Collecting the data is bad enough. Creating this aggregate is even more dangerous. Making use of it for other than protection from terrorists seems to me to be downright unconstitional. Some would argue that the whole thing is. OTOH, now that it exists we're unlikely to be able to find out how extensive it is, or what uses are being made of it, terrorism related or not.
  • pay in cash (until cash transactions are outlawed)

    make random, sudden, large withdrawals and deposits in your accounts
    (large being a relative term in my case)

    barter. I'd like to see them track "traded three chickens for a
    bale of hay and running some CAT-5" &until barter becomes illegal)

  • Cash (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ann Coulter ( 614889 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @04:52PM (#4718455)
    Most terrorists will use credit cards and checks without a second thought. Most necessary purchases for any terrorist can be placed without giving the slightest indication of terrorism such as gasoline, nails, backpacks, household ammonia, hexamine, car batteries, SUVs, glassware, growth media, gas masks, firecrackers, food, shelter, and prostitutes. Most of what would be tracked could be easily stolen from a low security University laboratory, libraries, by killing the owners of a gun shop (tricky), hospitals, stealing large trucks, or by killing Air Marshalls and taking their guns. Terrorists can easily build a scrapnel bomb or a culture of bacteria with less than a thousand dollars and perhaps a trip to the laboratory. The terrorists already have the policing under control, its you citizens who don't.

    Fox News can go to hell.
    • Most terrorists will use credit cards and checks without a second thought.

      Really? That's very interesting. Now how do you know that? Have you interviewed all terrorists?

    • Re:Cash (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The whole point of tracking purchases is so that they can use datamining to find people who buy large quantities or interesting combinations of things such as "gasoline, nails, ... household ammonia, hexamine, car batteries, ... growth media, gas masks, firecrackers". Individual purchases will be ignored, but unusual combinations, especially ones which are inconsistent with the individual's normal buying patterns, will be tagged for further investigation.

      Anyway, I think privacy advocates are wasting their time -- it's a lost cause. There are already video cameras everywhere. In the U.S., they are mostly in private buildings, but it won't be too long before the FBI starts buying feeds from these and using face recognition to track people's movements. Purchases are already being tracked by corporate interests (and the FBI/Pentagon has just as much access to this info as do the telemarketers).

      And such monitoring does not by itself do any harm! For this reason it is much more critical to focus on the potential for corruption and abuse of the power that surveilance gives the authorites. (And, at the risk of flamebaiting, you desperately need to work on making your government more transparent and more genuinely democratic instead of being just a meritocracy of wealthy lawyers and businessmen.)
    • ...gasoline, nails, backpacks, household ammonia, hexamine, car batteries, SUVs, glassware, growth media, gas masks, firecrackers...prostitutes....laboratory...killing ...gun...hospitals...Air Marshalls...scrapnel bomb...culture of bacteria.

      I think your post just maxed out the NSA's internet keyword scanning software. Expect a knock on your door right...about...NOW.

      Well, maybe not the part about the prostitutes.

  • Orwell anyone? (Score:5, Informative)

    by suprnova ( 179605 ) <suprnova@suprnova.net> on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @04:53PM (#4718468) Homepage
    SHHH...the thought police will hear you...
    it just gets worse and worse ever day...

    Also, look who is working on it...someone really really trustworthy with all of my information:

    Rear Adm. John Poindexter, former national security adviser to President Reagan, is developing the database under the Total Information Awareness Program. Poindexter was convicted on five counts of misleading Congress and making false statements during the Iran-Contra investigation.

    • Poindexter's convictions were later thrown out on a technicality IIRC. Not that he doesn't scare me; but let's get the facts straight.
      • They weren't thrown out per se: The original trial was suspended due to a national security claim which couldn't be resolved. In his first week or so of offce, Bush I pardoned him in part to help cover Reagan/Bush duplicity in the whole affair. Poindexter would have been retried and fully convicted without the presidential pardon.

  • What else in the name of "War on Terror"? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hbmartin ( 579860 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @04:57PM (#4718525)
    What else will be done in the name of the war terror? /. has already posted articles about the home land security bill making "hacking" (typical media lingual misuse) a very serious crime. I mean here's activity that the article quoted the Govt. guru as saying "sudden and large cash withdrawals, one-way air or rail travel, rental car transactions and purchases of firearms". Cause normal people don't have financial emergencies, or move, and CERTAINLY od not excercise their 2nd ammendment rights.
  • I would trust a database such as this, if it was truly anonomous and only released names when there is really a genuine cause for alarm. (i.e. John Doe buys 20 gallons of kerosine, 100 lb. of fertilizer, and rents a truck...) Assuming the government is trustworthy (and I'm not sure, there) the system would be used only to alert authorities to potential terrorist activity.

    Of course such a system would have to be connected to the rest of the world through some medium, to be able to collect data, and if it's on a large network, it can and will be cracked. So perhaps it's not such a good idea after all...
    • My grandfather is a farmer and frequently makes such transactions as part of maintaining his land (kerosine for flame thrower to burn weeds, fertilizer for fertilizing), except for the truck part. He already owns a truck.
  • If it were up to them, we'd have national ID cards witgh a central database of fingerprints, retina-scans. Phone tapping would simply require they type your name in. Privacy Shmivacy.

    It's a good thing they're not in charge.

  • Et tu, art department? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dannon ( 142147 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @05:04PM (#4718612) Journal
    What I want to know is, could this Information Awareness Office have possibly chosen a worse logo [reason.com] for discounting the paranoid fears of conspiracy theorists?
    • Now you've done it...Steve Jackson is going to be reading through here and suddenly start having flashbacks.
    • Oh dear. Thanks for the heads up. Our research group actually does DARPA-funded IT research, and now I will be prepared to refuse when my boss comes to me and says, "Isn't this a great logo? Can you put it on the proposal we're sending?"

      OTOH, I'm not too crazy about this Poindexter-headed initiative in the first place, so if they're constantly harrassed by a mob of paranoid conspiracy theorists, so much the better. Maybe we should write up a grant proposal to create them a new logo!
  • This is now old news, it was a part of the Homeland Security bill which just passed.

    In the past two weeks there has been talk of this in the New York Times [nytimes.com] (registration blah blah blah), The Washington Post [washtimes.com] and
    Harper's weekly review [harpers.org], to name a few. NPR's All Things Considered [npr.org] had a commentary on this [npr.org] (RealAudio) the other night.

    Last week was the time to prevent it, now it's probably too late -- it's law.

  • Lets face it kids...the terrorists have won (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NiceGeek ( 126629 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @05:12PM (#4718665)
    Bin Laden has done exactly what he set out to do. All he has to do is pop up from time to time and our half-witted "leaders" will do the job of destroying everything that makes America..America.
  • Yahoo [yahoo.com] has good summary article of nation wide editorials on the issue.

  • Every AMERICAN CITIZEN??? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bbonnn ( 519410 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @05:31PM (#4718836)
    Quote from the article: "A massive database that the government will use to monitor every purchase made by every American citizen is a necessary tool in the war on terror, the Pentagon said Wednesday."

    Do you think they're going to limit it just to American citizens, or was that just a weird inaccurate description used by the reporter?

    Hrm. If we're so worried about foreign terrorists (as well as domestic), you think they'd broaden the scope of the database ...
    • Of course, "every American citizen" is a subset of "every person who makes a purchase in the U.S." so the statement would still technically be true if the article said they tracked the purchases of "every person" as opposed to "every citizen."

      But I doubt that's what the author meant.

      I hate it when reportage is confusing.
      • Wait, no, I got that backwards. This is the last time I post here without Previewing (ha ha).

        What I meant to say: if they said "every citizen" and the gov't was actually tracking "every person" then the article in its current manifestation would still be true.

        Okay. Final post on this subject. Signing off.
      • they won't be tracking most of my purchases - i left america back in 1998 when i realised far too many of my fellow citizens were spending far too much time discussing clinton's penis and not nearly enough time paying attention to laws like the dmca and dozens of others. or the widening gap between rich and poor. or dealing honestly and constructively with the multitude of injustices in american society. or seriously working on environmental, health and waste issues.

        instead, people were more interested in clinton's penis, the amazing efficiency of private industry (how efficient were they really?), and buying suv's.

        no one was all that interested in protecting freedom - maybe their pet freedoms but no one elses.

        as far as i can see, things haven't changed much.

        and actually, come to think of it, the us gov't does track a lot of my activity. eschelon is alive and well and has been for years. sounds like domestic american citizens will be getting a taste of what the rest of the world has gotten. if it feels invasive and wrong, keep in mind that unlike the rest of the world you guys have a say.

        but as usual, you're not saying much.
        • but as usual, you're not saying much.

          Is this really an accurate thing to say to the Slashdot crowd? :)

        • nearly a month on this gets marked as flamebait? and why - because it's telling the uncomfortable truth?

          the current us administration is shredding the bill of rights so quickly i swear they've drafted in fawn hall as a shredding consultant. and as for american foreign policy it has in the past (and quite definitely now) leaves a lot to be desired.

          i grew up in kansas, and america has an impressive progressive history. blemishes along the way for sure, but its a history of progress overall. that achievement is not well represented externally and i find that disappointing.

          so whoever you are, you can take your politically motivated, uncritical and dare i say unpatriotic "-1 flamebait" and shove it down your ass.
  • Hi all, im surprised that slashdot didnt post this sooner but the bill for the Homeland Security carried a provision to make
    every transaction
    1. credit card
    2. phone call
    3. email
    4. vacation
    5. any bought

    go into a massive database.
    From what I understand this has now passed into law!
    The funny part is that the sponsor of this part of the bill is the same dude who master-minded the iran-contra affair.

    Anyway, what's funny is that there was a small outcry in the nytimes "You are suspect"
    you can read it here
    http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/14/opinion/14 SAFI.h tml

    anyway, I'm surprised no one else has mentioned. Perhaps it was one of those 'They couldn't, could they?" reactions to the whole idea that know paid serious mind to it and now its law.

  • ACLU Petition (Score:3, Interesting)

    by frantzdb ( 22281 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @05:35PM (#4718871) Homepage
    This is related, I believe: http://www.aclu.org/Cyber-Liberties/Cyber-Libertie s.cfm?ID=11332&c=58 [aclu.org]

    --Ben

  • I'm a terrorist (Score:3, Funny)

    by damiangerous ( 218679 ) <1ndt7174ekq80001@sneakemail.com> on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @05:45PM (#4718995)
    sudden and large cash withdrawals, one-way air or rail travel, rental car transactions and purchases of firearms

    My paycheck is direct deposited, but other than that I deal almost entirely in cash, so I make "large" withdrawals every week. Three times this year I've purchased a one-way rail ticket for a 300 mile journey to meet up with friends and travel back with them by car. I've rented a car once this year. I have a collection of firearms.

    Yep. Terrorist.

  • Using information from the new consumer database, the ATF raided hundreds of terrorists around the country. Posing as farmers, they had purchased ammonium nitrate claiming that it was fertilizer. President Bush said, "We will destroy these rural hayseed terrorists with the same extreme prejudice we would use on those Ay-rabs. Everyone knows ammonium nitrate has only one use: Making bombs." Bush said a cyberterrorism raid was in the works as well. "We will round up anyone who bought a computer with Linux. We all know only cyberterrorists use Linux."
  • > a massive database of every transaction made in America.

    Oh, brother.

    Big Brother, that is.

  • How do they plan to track all of the drug dealers?
  • Writing our representatives is rather futile. Most people are apathetic and dont care/know what is going on with their rights/privacy. Is there absolutely anything that can be done, short of revolution, that can get our point across that we do not want the government monitoring us and treating us all as terrorist??

  • Not all that sinister (Score:3, Interesting)

    by medcalf ( 68293 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @06:23PM (#4719325) Homepage
    The Total Information Awareness program will not, in fact, gather any information. Nor will it change who gets to see the information that the government already collects nor how long that information is maintained. All that this program is, is a way to gather together the information that the government already collects, in a form where data can be mined between elements which are currently not linkable. The press is getting it wrong, as usual, and the rash posters on slashdot are taking the press, oddly, at their words, then putting on the tinfoil hats and heading off into conspiracy theory heaven.

    • NOT ALL THAT SINISTER?!? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by IshanCaspian ( 625325 ) on Wednesday November 20, 2002 @07:58PM (#4719984) Homepage
      "where data can be mined between elements which are currently not linkable"

      As information is linked together the potential of that information is raised exponentially. It is only the fact that there is relatively little collaboration between the various government and corporate entities. The implied intention in linking our data together is that one will be able to predict who will be a terrorist and who will not. This is the stuff of Orwell, folks. Public libraries know I'm reading "Civil Disobedience" by Thoreau. The government knows I'm registered with some leftist party. I have a registered gun. All of those pieces of data are currently kept with people who need to know them to do our job. Political organizations need to keep mailing lists. Credit card companies need to keep their bills. Libraries need to keep track of their books, and so on. However, it is the mere combination of those pieces of data that causes us to transgress into the realm of oppression. Now, we have men or machines trying to connect the dots, to presume me guilty before I even commit a crime. That's one of the fundamental beliefs of our country, isnt it? Innocent until Proven Guilty? That is totally incompatible with the type of terror we are facing. This war on terror, although it started off with the gunning down of a few hapless, pissed off fundamentalists, must by nature totally consist, from here on out, of catching criminals before they commit crimes. That is the common theme of the government's reaction to 9/11: we should have caught them before they comitted the crime. That means that all advances in this war on terror must come about by knowing more about YOUR life, what YOU buy, and trying to determine whether or not YOU are a terrorist. Unchecked efforts to capture criminals before they commit crimes is the cornerstone of oppression, the very mechanism by which all political distopias create their horror in the reader.

      The parent post is totally missing the danger in this advancement. It's very easy to point and laugh and make dumb cracks about tin foil hats, but your liberties are being steadily eroded.

      Those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither.
  • Screw this, I'm moving to Mexico, or the moon or something. This is absurd. Nobody seems to care about privacy anymore, and I think these lyrics sum it up best:

    When they took the Fourth Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs.
    When they took the Fifth Amendment, I was quiet because I was innocent.
    When they took the Second Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't own a gun.
    Now they've taken the First Amendment and I can't say anything.

    I have a friend who has this in his signature:

    "I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." - James Madison
    • This is a great signature:


      I have a friend who has this in his signature:

      "I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." - James Madison


      Only this time, of course, I am replying
      to a poster who had a friend who had as
      his signature that quote that I was about
      to put into my signature.
  • No, no.. we dont need justification for these things any more. I remember quite clearly that laws have recently been passed stating that we dont need probable cause. That means "We can pass anything we want now and we dont need to explain our reasoning"
  • aren't they allready tracking me when I borrow 'mein kampf' written by A.H. from a library?

  • biometrics (Score:2, Interesting)

    by zogger ( 617870 )
    --the dotcom boom of the 2000's is biometrics-well one of them anyway. You ask how they'll track cash purchases? Well in stores they'll use facial recognition, body language recognition, walking styles recognition, monitor your pulse rate, whatever. I've seen all these articles linked from slashdot already. could be an electronic fingerprint required to finalise the purchase. all that stuff is here already in test areas. And I'd say some huge numbers of stores have vid cameras already, might not be very hard to pass another one of those laws. They already are doing it all over in public places. No stopping that action now, the goons DIG on that big brother "command and control and surveil" action. they can't get enough or roll it out fast enough. and they got all the grunts they need wiling to do the work, from camp executioners to scientists, shell out the cash, you can hire all the goons with no conscious ya want to.

    In the works for US currency soon:

    Next year, the phase out of old greenbacks and new "colored" money. One of (several of the) the scams being promoted is cash that "times out". That's right, spend it by a certain date or it gradually loses a % of value down to zip.

    In the works for US people soon, the implantable chip, pretty soon mandated. They'll do prisoners first, dangerous released felons on parole, "sex offenders", etc. then high risk medical patients. then normal prisoners. then "the chidrenz" so they don't get kidnapped. Proly need a few more high interest media feeding frenzy staged "kidnappings" for this to take hold. Then the military in general. The goal there is total robot cyborgs, this can just be seen now, they aren't even hiding it. Then, everyone gets the chips with no saying "no" because "we need good universal ID that can't be faked" (easily),most likely combined with a massive (again, staged on purpose for effect) bioterrorist attack so they can "keep track of who got the shots (and implants) and not.

    government works on these three principles, create a problem, get the reaction you expect, off the solution. They'll have people lining up begging them for the chips(with the medical 'cure' and food and etc that will go with it), with few exceptions. Tracking cash is not going to be that hard, IMO. they don't have to track all of it, just most of it, like they track most of what happens now or have the ability to do so.

    And they just voted "yes" yesterday to start doing all this stuff, more or less, I mean, they aren't being coy about it.

  • ..ANOTHER fucking repeat (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...story from last week. Jesus fucking christ on a biscuit. Do the editors even READ Slashdot? If they did, they'd know this was reported Nov 9th [slashdot.org] and by the same fucking editor.

    So whose more retarded - Michael or Timothy?

  • HA! YOU BUY PORN!!! CAUGHT YA!!!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Picass0 ( 147474 ) on Thursday November 21, 2002 @02:17AM (#4721118) Homepage Journal
    Dear Pentagon,

    Rear Adm. John Poindexter is going to spend a buttload of money to build a supercomputer when a phone call would do - yep, I dig porn. I hope that satisfies your curiousity. I stop in the adult book store occasionally. And he's going to log all of my web hits? Mostly porn sites. You want a back door to my computer? Just to save you the effort it's full of porn. Go figure.

    So by everyone just speaking up and admitting they dig porn, perhaps we won't need to build this computer. Maybe we can save some tax money and spend it on KILLING THE FUCKING TERRORISTS!!!!!

    I mean, for christ sake! Logging everything the CITIZENS of this contry do and say and buy! Hey, why not track who we fuck? What we eat? Stick our DNA in there for good measure! How we vote! Record every one of our phone calls and store them!

    I know you're a bit freaked out after Sept. 11, but TRACKING THE CITIZENS of this country doesn't make much sense when the attacks were carried out by NON-CITIZENS!!! Track them! Prove it by tracking one! Just one. Track OBL and snuff him!

    Wanna make a difference?? CONTROL OUR FUCKING BORDERS and reform the INS!

    PS - Being that the supercomputer and database are likely to exist already, and the law was just a nice formality, then I imagine this message will actually make it's way to you. I hope it provides you with some amusement, being that I am just a pion, insignificant. Just an American.

    Gotta go, Big Brother! Gonna eat a cheeseburger and watch the Victoria's Secret show. You probably knew that already, but I'm just making sure.
  • As consume happy as we are how much storage are we talking here? For one day much less one year. Any informed folks care to speculate?
  • I dont know why, but this all really doesn't worry me that much. I mean, now the government will know when i go out and buy new speakers for my computer, or that new nifty spiffy triple blade razor. I know a lot of people are horribly worried about the government knowing what they buy, but think about it, are they going to CARE? You are still 1 in however many millions of people that they're looking at. And well...if you go and buy fertilizer, kerosene and a truck, maybe they'll go and make sure you're not hanging around with any known terrorists or sympathizers. Maybe they'll investigate you and your family. If you aren't doing anything wrong, then why are you worried? (i know i've heard that before, its supposed to be scary right?)

    Besides, is your life really that interesting?
  • ..be easier to assume that everyone is a terrorist and have them shot on sight.... Saves a lot of tax money..
  • "Bin Laden has done exactly what he set out to do. All he has to do is pop up from time to time and our half-witted "leaders" will do the job of destroying everything that makes America..America." Bin Laden. . . . The boogey man of the new era. You realize that this Bin Laden is never going to die. If he did, the US would have no reason to wage the war on Terrorism. One hundred years from now, we'll still be fighting this war on terrorism against Bin Laden the cyborg, or maybe one of his clones, Bin Laden the Virus, or whatever. BL is an excuse. Everything that goes wrong in the world these days is attributed to BL. Every generation has their boogey man. Stalin, Hitler, Quadaffi, Ayatolla, Ho Chi Min, pick one. Ours is no differnt.

  • Well, I guess there is something to be said for putting a traitor in charge of looking for bad guys. Presumably he'd know where to look - under rocks, in seedy dives, at the Pentagon.... I wonder if the database will include illegal arms sales and defense contractor kickbacks, or does it just cover run-of-the-mill privacy invasions like what I bought at the corner store?

  • The FBI can't even keep track of how many of its laptops have been stolen. They JUST made a massive update to its databases so they would only be 10 years out of date. That raises two questions: Does any government agency really have the capability to track all of the millions of transactions every hour? And if they do, why isn't the money allocated to the core competencies of the organizations rather than crap like this? This looks like more of a pipe dream than anything (for a few years).

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