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03 December 2006

What's YOUR Terror Score?!?

We all have credit ratings that follow us around like digital shadows. Now, starting this Monday, Dec. 4, every time you leave or enter the United States by air, land, or sea, your own government’s computers will officially judge the probability that you are a terrorist, make that judgement widely available, and keep your terror score on file for 40 years. By assigning you a computer-generated risk assessment based upon your travel pattern, your companions, your method of payment and even the kind of food you eat -- among other, as yet unknown tidbits of data -- the U.S. Department of Homeland security thinks it can make you safer.
“When some unknown government computer, using unknown sources of information, tags you as a ‘security risk’ and begins circulating that label around the government, you will have no meaningful way of finding out why you were given that label, let alone challenging its validity,” says Barry Steinhardt, Director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Project. ”
Feel safer?

Never heard of the Automated Tracking System? That is by design. The information was just published in the Federal Register last week. Care to comment to the government about this new system? It’s too late! The system officially goes into effect Monday, although they’ve unofficially been doing it since 2002. By the way, they’ve attempted this Big Brother tracking sh*t before...

“The government tried to institute the CAPPS II program of ‘risk assessments’ on passengers several years ago, and a huge uproar rightly followed, and the Congress was forced to intervene,” says Steinhardt. “We are stunned to learn that DHS is now implementing an even more far-reaching program with virtually no opportunity for the public to evaluate or comment on it.”

Or, remember Total Information Awareness? It’s baaaack -- and it goes into effect tomorrow!
To some privacy advocates, the ATS project seemed a resurrection of the Defense Department program known as Total Information Awareness. In that program, federal officials sought to data mine the consumer and banking records of millions of Americans to discern patterns that might point to certain individuals as possible terrorists.

This freshly uncovered travesty has barely been mentioned in the press or blogosphere. It is because this is a Pearl Harbor style sneak attack on our civil liberties by the Orwellian Bu$hCo cabal. Now, aren’t you glad we have those Democrats in charge of Congress? What are they doing about it? So far, nothing! It’s time to hit the phones, friends...