FBI Data Mining Students' Financial Aid Records 254
crumley writes "The U.S. Department of Education has been running a program that data mines student financial aid records for the FBI. The program, now five years old, is known as Project Strike Back. It trolls for names of suspected terrorists through the Education Department's database of information, which is derived from students who fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). The discovery of this program by Northwestern University journalism student Laura McGann has added fuel to the debate about the Education Department's proposal to start a new database tracking the academic progress of all students."
1000 Records is a really small number (Score:4, Informative)
Windows Admin Tools [intelliadmin.com]
Re:1000 Records is a really small number (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:1000 Records is a really small number (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:1000 Records is a really small number (Score:5, Insightful)
If they're using the records of a MILLION people, they could be doing some sort of statistical analysis. As is, it's rather clear that they're actually looking at each individual person in detail.
It's a wasted effort. (Score:3, Informative)
No. Noth that I'm aware of.
All had plenty of Bin Laden Bucks. IIRC the excess was transferred back before the attack.
Clue to dumbass who thought of this idea;
Federal Financial Aid is barely enough to finance your education (at least back when I was in college).
This is nothing more than an invasive Big Brother abuse of power.
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Re:1000 Records is a really small number (Score:5, Informative)
This wasn't trolling through student data at random, it was for specific names that were already part of an FBI investigation. That point is being entirely missed in the comments here. The FBI has a list of people they're investigating, and are asking the DoE to check if any of them are applying for financial aid anywhere. That sounds like basic police work to me. Perhaps it's newsworthy because it's surprising that two branches of the federal government can coordinate on anything.
Why not require a warrant? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Why not require a warrant? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes, but I don't see why an application for student loans should be subject to search by the FBI. I really don't see why there's such a special connection between the FSAF (if I got that acronym right) and the FBI that they can't go through the normal channels and get a subpoena for the records if they think that there's probable cause.
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really? Judges are not mere rubber stamps. In actual fact they actually JUDGE the information to determine if on the balance of probabilities a search is justified. They also obtain an OATH from a witness of some kind (albeit often a cop) as to what exactly they claim to believe. This can be held against the individual in the future with the possibile consequence of a pe
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Well, why would they. You point out that they have open access to this at any time. Then you ask why they wouldn't get a warrant.
Once you write the laws so that you can see any information about anyone without a warrant, why would you then bother w
Re:Why not require a warrant? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to get all pissy about something, get mad at all the Financial Aid offices all over the nation at various colleges and universities who take FAFSA data and use it to come up with Audit plans. They say they are randomly auditing students but really they only audit the poor kids. This is because they are eligable for the most aid. Every year I went to college I was "randomly audited" by my financial aid office based on information I submitted in my FAFSA. This audit put the burden of proof on my to prove that my information was correct. The financial aid office could not be bothered to actually check any of the facts I had submitted. Every year I had to prove to them just how poor I really was. One year, they did not audit me and also did not give me any aid. When I inquired as to why they said that they "extrapolated" that I must have over $100,000 in savings based on the amount of interest I claimed on my tax returns the year before. What they failed to realize is that the interest was accumulated since I was born in the form of savings bonds and I claimed it all in one year when I cashed them in. The information I submitted on my FAFSA said I was poor but they choose not to beleive me and also choose not to notify me that they were not offering me any aid because of their "analysis" of my situation. I had to go dig through my records and give those bastards copies of my savings bond receipts for them to believe that I really didn't have $100k stashed away somewhere. Then finally they gave me my aid. If you want to be pissed off at someone. Be pissed off at the Financial Aid offices at your local University. Those Bastards!
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That means Free Application for Federal Student Aid.
By filling out this application, you are giving the government permission to essentially pour over every detail you put in the application, to verify if it is true or not. That means everything. Anything suspicious or false means you could have the FBI knocking on your door, just based on the bad info.
FAFSA is not sent to some private organization. You are asking the government to put yo
Re:Why not require a warrant? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yes, standard police wo
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If only I was as well paid.
Re:1000 Records is a really small number (Score:5, Insightful)
It's beginning with a particular piece of information (either the terrorism suspect's name, or the suspected vehicle's tag number) and then searching through records to find out where that person or vehicle may be, so that it can be investigated further.
The police don't need a warrant to do that any more than they need a warrant to check to see if your car is stolen when you get pulled over.
Where it would have become improper, was if the police had said, "give us the names and addresses of anyone from country x, y, and z who has applied for financial aid to college," or instead of giving the Dept. of Education a list of particular names to search for, they had simply requested a dump of the entire database (or access to the database) to comb through at their leisure. Either of those things would be overly invasive and wrong. But to say that the police shouldn't have the ability to search through government records during the course of an investigation is ridiculous.
Many long-term investigations are broken only because a suspect will unintentionally break cover in some subtle way; it makes sense to have individuals who are on watch lists (terrorism/foreign-nationals-of-interest lists, FBI Wanted lists, outstanding warrants lists) to be filtered through existing databases on a periodic basis to see if they turn up. Frankly I'm surprised they don't just have some sort of batch program set up to do this; rather than making it a one-shot, they ought to re-run the names continously and then notify law enforcement if there's a 'hit.' Doing so wouldn't compromise the privacy of persons not on the lists, and wouldn't require that anyone else's information be turned over to law enforcement -- so unless they were interested in you already, submitting your FAFSA wouldn't put you at risk.
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Unless of course you just happen to have the same name as someone on the list. But what are the chances of that happening?
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Not much more complicated than when cops run a suspect's financial records or call records. They're simply looking for more information about suspects/known criminals. Hardly newsworthy ala the NSA or AO
Re:1000 Records is a really small number (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:1000 Records is a really small number (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:1000 Records is a really small number (Score:5, Interesting)
This may sound counterintitive, but I disagree strongly. I want the FBI to be partially on a different page as the Military, as the local police. Sure, it slightly increases the chance that a catastrophic attack might succeed, but there are much more important variables than this in that equation. No, the drag of having massively powerful agencies collaborating is that it makes their view all the more awesomely omniscient. Where then does privacy live?
Look, if you were able to coordinate all extraneous public bits of data that a person ejects into the environment through paperwork, shopping, loan apps, etc, it would, after a certain degree of sophistication and interdepartmental coopoeration, become nearly trivially easy to identify, say, AIDS patients, or gay people, or people who cheat on their spouse with a very high degree of confidence. At that point, all the on-paper privacy in the world doesn't mean squat. With increased automation and advances in data mining heuristics, the cost of correlating data per person keeps going down. Sure, it may be too expensive to do categorical surveillance on a wide scale now, but just wait twenty years.
The government isn't a collection of scientists at a symposium, and not all information *wants* to be free (or whatever the kids' rhetoric is these days). The government has direct power, to coerce, to control, to detain, and yes, even to kill, and do all of these facelessly and on a wide scale. That awesome power is checked somewhat significantly on paper, but the more important practical check on the use of that power usually is pragmatism brought on by bureacratic inefficiency. This isn't about sharing information in the abstract. This is about sharing personal data, the analysis of which may well control the fate of someone's life or freedom.
Transcript Reform? (Score:5, Funny)
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Unlikely. Every time you apply for any kind of an educational program, you have to submit everything, even if it's to the same school, the same department, hell, even the same person.
Re:Transcript Reform? (Score:5, Informative)
The absolute majority of foreign students are not eligible for FAFSA, and hence do not even file the applications. Monitoring FAFSA hence targets the long neglected domestic trailor-trash/ghetto terror threat.
Of course applying for FAFSA should not automatically give the Govt a probable cause since George W Bush clearly stated being poor does not make one a criminal by itself:
First, let me make it very clear, poor people aren't necessarily killers. Just because you happen to be not rich doesn't mean you're willing to kill.
Re:Transcript Reform? (Score:5, Insightful)
The absolute majority of foreign students are not eligible for FAFSA
That is the most important point, which most people including professors themselves don't know. I don't think there is any federal financial aid for foreign except for very very minute segment. So if the FBI is investigating or analyzing these records you have to wonder who they are "striking back" against? US citizens? FBI sure does have heads up their asses.Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Transcript Reform? (Score:4, Informative)
It's a real quote.
"First, let me make it very clear, poor people aren't necessarily killers. Just because you happen to be not rich doesn't mean you're willing to kill." -- Washington, D.C., May 19, 2003 [slate.com]
Out of context, but real (Score:3, Informative)
"Q And the poverty problem?
PRESIDENT BUSH: And the poverty problem -- listen, this nation is committed to dealing with poverty. First, let me make it very clear, poor people aren't necessaril
We should be tracking our government. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is unacceptable. The lack of self-control exhibited by this administration and its departments over the last six years is unbelievable. If enough of this junk happens, it is actually going to cause social instability. What a clusterf* modern government has become.
Re:We should be tracking our government. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why do you hate America so much?
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Since, as a rule, foreigners are not eligible for this program, the only ones who would be investigated are American citizens. Unless you're saying that the Timothy McVeighs and Eric Rudolphs were being tracked.
Would rather have Clinton and Saddam back in power?
Let's see. Under Clinton we had a growing economy, an increase in real wages (even accounting for inflation), a reduction in the national debt, modest fisca
Self Control should not be necessary (Score:2)
If I'm paying taxes to the government... (Score:3, Insightful)
My problem isn'
We shouldn't give them our data in the first place (Score:3, Insightful)
Frankly, it serves us right to have the government mining all this information about us; we let them accumulate it in the first place. When failures happen in the institutions we expect to be protecting our health and safety, we demand better interagency communication. Well, here it is.
Each new aspect of our lives that we grant entitlement status to -- which we th
Learn how to assess risk (Score:5, Insightful)
What exactly should the government be doing? Waiting patiently for the next attack?
You're confusing two things- the demands of justice in response to such an attack, and what a logical response to such an attack should be.
Justice is a compelling motive for a strong reaction, but that reaction should then be just itself. Removing every American's privacy rights is unjust. This is what is not sinking into people's skulls.
What would a logical response to the attack be, if you were wanting to minimize loss of American life? Well it certainly wouldn't be this.
Since asthma killed more people in 2001 than died in 9/11, I would suggest that we should lose as many or fewer of our rights as Americans, than we do in our reaction to asthma.
A lot of people object when I make this argument, but other than ad hominem attacks nobody ever refutes it or explains why it's wrong.
I fly all the time, and I live in one of the blue states most likely to be affected by terrorism, but I do not worry about terrorism at all because I am not stupid. In fact it's clearly the people least likely to be affected by terrorism who are clamoring for our rights to be taken away because of it.
I realize that asthma is not as politically exploitable as terrorism, and the American press fixates on it whenever the JonBenet story dies down, but the alarmism of the press is one reason why Americans are incapable of correctly assessing risk.
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Since asthma killed more people in 2001 than died in 9/11, I would suggest that we should lose as many or fewer of our rights as Americans, than we do in our reaction to asthma.
A lot of people object when I make this argument, but other than ad hominem attacks nobody ever refutes it or explains why it's wrong.
Ok.. first off.. the bottom sentence - why it's wrong: equivocation. I would argue your fixation on the relation to death and rights loss is incorrect. I have never read a legitimate pro rights
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Given that we view risk of death as the risk being assesed- the point is that there are MANY other risks that pose a greater threat than that of terrorism. Mitigating many of these 'risks' - illness, car crashes, etc. are economically much more feasible with respect to the ratio between prevention of one death and the amount of money/time/effort necessary to prevent the death.
Human nature tends to be irrational and assign a much higher value to the prevention of catastrophic
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The AC gave you a pretty good reply. Here is my two cents.
You obviously can't associate the two. They have nothing to do with each other. But you can compare them as risks. Terrorism doesn't kill even half as many Americans per year as does asthma.
Asthma kills between 5000 and 6000 Americans per year. If some politician came on the scene and declared a "War on Asthma", and demanded that
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Geee, that's a tough one. Working within the Constitutionally-established boundaries, and with any limits imposed by existing laws, would be a good starting point. Do you believe that everyone who fought and died in order to maintain our freedom did so so that a rogue administration could toss it aside like yesterday's trash?
Big Leashed Brother (Score:4, Insightful)
Not just "trust" as in "the president seems like a decent person", but Reagan's promise to "trust but verify". Real Congressional oversight. Real punishment for violators. Real institutional processes for keeping data within the scope of only the required transaction. Real trustworthy government processes that make "security" both use and protect data.
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Legit Question for Parent: If the Republican party loses the house, senate, and presidency, then will you be able to "trust the government"? Or is there something else that would also need to occur? Or do you believe you can ever trust the government? Thank you.
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Which the government mostly did, when Congress was Democratic.
I'm not sure I could trust a Democratic congress either though?
Cynthia McKinney [wtvm.com] didn't believe she should be punished for scuffling with a police officer.
William J. Jefferson [cqpolitics.com] didn't get punished for
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Cynthia McKinney was voted down in her Democratic primary after she abused her power (to nearly negligible effect) in public view. Democrats voted her out.
William Jefferson was caught on evidence, deserted by the Party, removed from power, and will probably go to jail.
Patrick Kennedy's drunken crash showed zero evidence of any corruption in his government responsibilities, nor did his unacceptable (though universally accepted) wrist-
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That's the key, along with the fact that no government, in the history of humanity, has shown itself worthy of such trust.
If someone wants to be trusted with such insane amounts of power, it's not enough for us to check up on him every so often to see if he's abusing it. Power that's only subject to spot checks by loyal lapdogs (Congressmen) is not limited at all.
Someone who is truly worthy of such trus
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If you don't want to have the Feds know anything about you while you attend college, my suggestions are:
1. Don't apply for *any* financial aid or work study positions. Don't even look at the Financial Aid Office.
2. Don't include your SSN on your application or any other documentation ever submitted to the college
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A better policy would force all those items you listed to scope their data to solely those transactions. With the surveillance process exposing them to only the active transaction, without retention or distribution beyond it. IOW, DNR should be the default, with only temporary security exceptions.
BTW (OT), I thought you might be interested to hear that David Bromberg pulled off a killer "Dark Hollow" and "It Takes a Lot to Laugh..."
Big leashed Constitutional Rights (Score:2)
There are no gray areas here. Search & seizure is not legal without a warrant. Period. No warrant without probable cause. Period. Dot. Stop.
I refuse to accept a police/surveillance state as a "cure" for terrorism.
What, is your argument that you'd rather give up your freedoms to be safe?
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Once we've given up the 4th Amendment protection of our privacy rights, we're not only "less safe". We're damaged beyond recognition.
I totally agree with you. An
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All these surveillence programs are not acceptable. Let's use the metaphor of classified information. Assume that we were to treat personal information as classified. You could argue that specific people in government should have the clearance to view this classified information. You could argue that they should be able to view it under strict conditions - just as you must handle classified information and as you suggest in your post.
The question I have is what is the criteria for the need to know? How d
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We need more privacy, not more, to be safe and free. Along with the legal checks and balances defined in the law after centuries of experience, like the FISA that Bush violated.
Another broken regulating mechanism is exposure of these crimes by the press. The New York Times published the story of NSA spying breaking the FISA l
Marvelous (Score:3, Insightful)
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More importantly, how do you feel about being left off the new planets list? You could have gone to college on Pluto, they don't have data mining there.
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Sounds like a great idea (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a great idea. It will make it a lot easier in the future to track down people who took subversive classes, classes from subversive professors, or classes with other subversives.
Of course, that does make it a little tricky today for students to figure out who will be a subversive in twenty or thirty years. I know that back when I was in University (yes, it was during Vietnam) I would have bet that the people on the wrong side of a Senate subcommittee would have been the ones throwing Molotov cocktails. I would have been wrong, though. They're the ones conducting the Inquisition now.
Well, nothing in life is certain.
I Don't Understand (Score:5, Insightful)
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The FBI doesn't have carte blanche to request data from any federal agency whatsoever. There are limits to their power. They have to get warrants to request certain types of data.
If they can ring up the Student Aid department and ask them to "Go ahead and send on over data X" then why couldn't they call up a state government agency, or a corporation, or even the IRS and request the same thing? Hopefully the Bureaucrats at the student aid place have enoug
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me get this straight? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just playing Devil's Advocate... (Score:2)
Like I said, I'm
Devil's Advocate continued... (Score:3, Funny)
- A requestor (government official, etc.) submits a request for a query on a specific database.
- The group gathering this data must be completely unbiased, preferably a group of people outsourced from another country
- This outside group is allowed to modify the requestors query as to remove any prejudice from it.
- Each person submitting their data must first be given an opt out choice as to be exluded from the data mining.
- Each record must be accumulated,
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That's a big if. Th
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So, from what I get, the summary of your post is : The reasoning behind government officials fighting terrorists is NOT America's safety and preservation, but instead it's so that they can stay in office, make more money, and get a promotion.
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I'll keep it short because apparently posters on
Absurd (Score:2, Interesting)
What is absurd is your analogy (Score:2, Insightful)
The cop chasing someone into a department store has a reasonable suspicion that someone in the department store has committed a crime. In situtations where a crime is currently being committed or someone is in immediate danger, allowances are made to protect people from harm. It is likely that the FBI had a reason to look at these students specifically, however no one outside the bureau knows that reason. There was no judicial oversight.
IANAL, but it would seem to me that since this information was tra
Good analogy (Score:2)
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The act of applying for the credit card is your approval.
"By signing for this, you hereby grant us the right to check blah blah blah."
I didn't fill out a FAFSA, but.... (Score:2)
As another poster pointed out, if you take money from the government, you sho
Step 3... (Score:2)
Concerned but simple minded crowd: Why are you collecting previously confidential information ??!
[Government official looks left and right, then pulls out a card that has the word Terrorist !! written on it in red (and in bold)]
Concerned but s
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Since when is your name 'confidential information'? Public. The fact that you have asked for government assistance? Public.
I guess it would also bother you if law enforcement looked through the phone book for people they're trying to catch up with, too.
Let's see, we don't want to look only among people of a particular race or cultural group. That would be profiling. Mustn't use facial recognition software (too invasive)! Can't focus on a particular religious group (The O.B.Laden Temple of Burn, Baby
Why is this called data mining? (Score:2)
Not the FBI submitting some names and asking 'do you have a record for mr. X'.
Maybe now they will realize (Score:4, Insightful)
Data mining? Hardly. (Score:3, Informative)
I don't have a problem with it, but... (Score:2)
As an aside, if you believe this war is a sham, and you believe that there is no global terrorist threat, then pay closer attention the next time Iranian "president" (A-mad-jihad or whatever his name is) goes on television and advocates the annihilation of a country, namely Israel. And that's only one piece of the puzzle. There has been global terrorism since at least the 1970's, and it's all connected to the
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/.ers do not care, because they believe that if we leave them alone, they will leave us alone. Which of course is only a fantasy.
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You can physically see Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Saudia Arabia, and Egypt from Israel (not all at the same time). In fact, while you're over there, why not visit some of those countries, to compare and contrast the typical lifestyle there with that of Israel.
You could also answer this question: What Arab country has street signs in Hebrew?
Sounds sort of like the "no-fly" list (Score:2, Funny)
-Mike
Not "mining" (Score:2)
If so, then the local cops are data mining DMV records every time they run a license plate.
Names of suspected terrorists... (Score:3, Insightful)
All they're really searching for are people with arab names.
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Re:The FBI sits under a bridge waiting for goats? (Score:5, Informative)
Argh. The editing at slashdot plumbs new depths of ineptitude.
It should of course be:
It trawls for names.
You know, I was going to say the same thing but I looked it up to be sure. I was surprised but, here's what I found:
troll1 (trol))
v. trolled, trolling, trolls
v. tr.
"trolling." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 01 Sep. 2006. <Dictionary.com [reference.com]http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=trolling& x=0&y=0 [reference.com] >
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I agree. There is a group out there trying to kill us. We have to catch them, and in order to do so we need to be able to query our own data. Why is it that so many people whine about this? They are implying that if we just back off, leave everything as it was, stop seeking terrorists, and stop fighting them, that the terrorists will just go away. This is a fantasy that will never happen, therefor
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then when the USSR was crumbling, they pulled out of afganistan and basically trashed everything on their way out, at which point the US just packed up and left with basicly a "thanks for
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Right, so you're telling me that if you ask a terrorist what they would like to do to the United States, they're going to answer: Scare them? I highly doubt that. They're going to say: Obliterate it, flatten it, kill everybody in it.
If they really are trying to kill us, they're doing a horrible job (compared to statistics of all the other bizarre things that kill more people than terrorists)
Good comparison. So if more people die being bitten by
Re:So basically (Score:5, Interesting)
Just say, in a few years time you go to run for elected office. Would you be comfortable if your oponnent had this information? Every Form you had ever filled out? What if there was a spelling mistake on an application and your oponnent accused you of fraud? What level privacy are you NOT willing to have?