http://www.truemajority.com/index.as...1&ms=priv2

The New York Times William Safire Piece:
>
> You Are a Suspect
> By WILLIAM SAFIRE
>
> WASHINGTON - 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.
>
> This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario. It is what will
> happen to your personal freedom in the next few weeks if John
> Poindexter gets the unprecedented power he seeks.
>
> Remember Poindexter? Brilliant man, first in his class at the
> Naval Academy, later earned a doctorate in physics, rose to national
> security adviser under President Ronald Reagan. He had this brilliant
> idea of secretly selling missiles to Iran to pay ransom for hostages,
> and with the illicit proceeds to illegally support contras in
> Nicaragua.
>
> A jury convicted Poindexter in 1990 on five felony counts of
> misleading Congress and making false statements, but an appeals
> court overturned the verdict because Congress had given him immunity
> for his testimony. He famously asserted, "The buck stops here,"
> arguing that the White House staff, and not the president, was
> responsible for fateful decisions that might prove embarrassing.
>
>
> This ring-knocking master of deceit is back again with a plan
> even more scandalous than Iran-contra. He heads the "Information
> Awareness Office" in the otherwise excellent Defense Advanced
> Research Projects Agency, which spawned the Internet and stealth
> aircraft technology. Poindexter is now realizing his 20-year dream:
> getting the "data-mining" power to snoop on every public and private
> act of every American.
>
> Even the hastily passed U.S.A. Patriot Act, which widened the
> scope of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and weakened
> 15 privacy laws, raised requirements for the government to report
> secret eavesdropping to Congress and the courts. But Poindexter's
> assault on individual privacy rides roughshod over such oversight.
>
>
> He is determined to break down the wall between commercial snooping
> and secret government intrusion. The disgraced admiral dismisses
> such necessary differentiation as bureaucratic "stovepiping."
> And he has been given a $200 million budget to create computer
> dossiers on 300 million Americans.
>
> When George W. Bush was running for president, he stood foursquare
> in defense of each person's medical, financial and communications
> privacy. But Poindexter, whose contempt for the restraints of
> oversight drew the Reagan administration into its most serious
> blunder, is still operating on the presumption that on such a
> sweeping theft of privacy rights, the buck ends with him and not
> with the president.
>
> This time, however, he has been seizing power in the open. In
> the past week John Markoff of The Times, followed by Robert O'Harrow
> of The Washington Post, have revealed the extent of Poindexter's
> operation, but editorialists have not grasped its undermining
> of the Freedom of Information Act.
>
> Political awareness can overcome "Total Information Awareness,"
> the combined force of commercial and government snooping. In a
> similar overreach, Attorney General Ashcroft tried his Terrorism
> Information and Prevention System (TIPS), but public outrage at
> the use of gossips and postal workers as snoops caused the House
> to shoot it down. The Senate should now do the same to this other
> exploitation of fear.
>
> The Latin motto over Poindexter's new Pentagon office reads
> "Scientia Est Potentia" - "knowledge is power." Exactly: the
> government's
> infinite knowledge about you is its power over you. "We're just
> as concerned as the next person with protecting privacy," this
> brilliant mind blandly assured The Post. A jury found he spoke
> falsely before.
>
> Letter to Senators:
>
> Please visit the TrueMajority Action Center to send free faxes
> to your Senators. Just click this link:
>
> http://www.truemajority.com/index.asp?action=2291&ms=priv2
>
> Dear Senator:
>
> I write as a constituent of yours to urge you to oppose any
> bill that would create the kind of centralized database of information
> about every American currently included in the version of the
> Homeland Security Act passed by the House. This massive invasion
> of privacy is frightening and Un-American. We can not hope to
> protect our freedoms by surrendering them.
>
> Thank you for your attention.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Your message below was sent to:
>
> Sen. Mark Dayton
> Room 346 SROB- Senate Russell Office Building
> Washington, DC 20510-3205
>
> Dear Senator Dayton,
>
> Sen. Dean Barkley
> Room 136 SHOB- Senate Hart Office Building
> Washington, DC 20510-2303
>
> Dear Senator Barkley,
>
> I write as a constituent of yours to urge you to oppose any
> bill that would create the kind of centralized database of information
> about every American currently included in the version of the
> Homeland Security Act passed by the House. This massive invasion
> of privacy is frightening and Un-American. We can not hope to
> protect our freedoms by surrendering them.
>
> Thank you for your attention.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Joseph Willemssen
> 1132 Orange Avenue East
> Saint Paul, MN 55106
>
>
>

 

I have nothing to hide, rather be safe than sorry.

 

When will it stop, by using fear to make us give up or personal rights, how can you say that. The governament having a file of everything i do, and you....That isn't right.

This is a question of right and wrong, This is def. wrong.

 

Its scary that the mere threat of people being hurt or killed these days causes people to willingly hand over those freedoms.

Sorry, its not scary. Its sad.

 

Are you serious - **** the constituion, so long as you feel safe - mindless moron

 

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
- Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941), U.S. Supreme Court Justice Dissenting, Olmstead v. U.S., 277 US, 438 (1928)

"Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."
-Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

"When they took the 4th Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs. When they took the 6th Amendment, I was quiet because I am innocent. When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was quiet because I don't own a gun. Now they have taken the 1st Amendment, and I can only be quiet."
- Tom Parmenter

 

Big Brother is watching you! (good book but scary thought)

 

you dont have to insult him to get your point across.

 

Nice quotes ya got there!

 

I think the commie hunt "the red scare" back in the 50s is proof that's never the case. People back then also had nothing to hide, yet were railroaded, imprisoned, lives ruined.