Activist Group Sues US Border Agency Over New, Vast Intelligence System 83
An anonymous reader writes with news about one of the latest unanswered FOIA requests made to the Department of Homeland Security and the associated lawsuit the department's silence has brought. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has sued the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in an attempt to compel the government agency to hand over documents relating to a relatively new comprehensive intelligence database of people and cargo crossing the US border. EPIC's lawsuit, which was filed last Friday, seeks a trove of documents concerning the 'Analytical Framework for Intelligence' (AFI) as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. EPIC's April 2014 FOIA request went unanswered after the 20 days that the law requires, and the group waited an additional 49 days before filing suit. The AFI, which was formally announced in June 2012 by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), consists of "a single platform for research, analysis, and visualization of large amounts of data from disparate sources and maintaining the final analysis or products in a single, searchable location for later use as well as appropriate dissemination."
Re:No Decent Solution (Score:4, Interesting)
> Nations must have borders or the nation ceases to exist.
I question that basic assumption: All that does is divide people into an "us vs them" mentality.
Why must there even BE _artificial_ human inventions such as borders?
The earth doesn't have borders, only men do.
I want a world where:
* People can freely live and work they may without another man giving them permission
* Personal Rights and Freedoms are respected and placed at a higher value then artificial government granted privileges,
* Governments to acknowledge that they are created BY the people to SERVE the people, not the other way around where people are brainwashed into believing they need artificial government granted privileges.
* Governments are Accountable for their actions
* Governments are Open about their actions
If people, and government which are an extension of people, would spend less time living in FEAR and profiting off making machines to kill other men we wouldn't even need borders.
Eventually a unified world government is more efficient but since that scares the hell out of a lot of people that will never happen until we remove money (corruption) from politics.
Re:No Decent Solution (Score:0, Interesting)
This will be unpopular, but...
Maybe Christians would like to worship without fear of being beheaded by religious fundamentalists from other religions? That might be one reason for a border.
If people behaved responsibly, you might have a point. Until then, I think the borders are a good thing.