The latest Greg Palast book
Armed Madhouse will tell the tale of ChoicePoint's latest exploits. We might remember them from such election roll purges as Florida in 2004...Apparently they did such a great job removing convicted Democrats from the voter rolls, they got the contract to supply the government with our personal data!
-more below-
It isn't (yet) legal for the government to do all this themselves so they hire companies like ChoicePoint to do it for them. As Mr. Palast
writes :
They are paid to keep an eye on you -- because the FBI can't. For the government to collect this stuff is against the law unless you're suspected of a crime. (The law in question is the Constitution.) But ChoicePoint can collect it for "commercial" purchases -- and under the Bush Administration's suspect reading of the Patriot Act -- our domestic spying apparatchiks can then BUY the info from ChoicePoint.
Pretty slick, huh?...and ChoicePoint collects it all...from your address and credit history to your Social Security Number. As he tells us, the government hopes to expand its DNA database with help from the technology of ChoicePoint (ChoicePoint helped identify remains from 9/11). This is of course to fight crime. This information could NEVER be used for nefarious purposes by any government entities...ChoicePoint isn't alone either; Palast mentions other data mining companies that are profiting from use of our personal information! Lynne Cheney sits on the board of one of them (Lockheed Martin)!
Why do these companies get to profit off of our information? If a movie is based on someone's life story, that person is compensated, right? Most people would not approve of their information being collected without their knowledge (much less consent). Where do these companies get our Social Security Numbers anyway? How can this be legal? I realize the government gets to buy the info it can't legally snoop for itself (as if we needed any more proof, business trumps privacy in the world today...), but I can't see how the accumulation of data is permissible in the first place. I mean...it's illegal to look through someone's trash behind their house but these companies can use high tech wizardry to do this on a massive scale?
I have to believe that if everyone in the US knew this was going on, the level of outrage could be sufficient to hopefully put a stop to this madness. Nearly every day there's a new revelation about how corrupt our government has become. When such oppression happens in Nazi Germany or the USSR, our nation is against such developments...in the name of FREEDOM. The Geneva Conventions are now frighteningly deemed "quaint"; is our democracy's foundation of liberty and personal privacy now outdated too? How long can they claim it's just about catching the bad guys when they want to have a NATIONAL DNA DATABASE! What do we do??