This is Scary

From the Markle Foundation Weekly Digest:

Centers Tap Into Personal Databases
State Groups Were Formed After 9/11
BY ROBERT O’HARROW JR., WASHINGTON POST
Intelligence centers run by states across the country have access to personal information about millions of Americans, including unlisted cellphone numbers, insurance claims, driver’s license photographs and credit reports, according to a document obtained by The Washington Post.

One center also has access to top-secret data systems at the CIA, the document shows, though it’s not clear what information those systems contain.

(you can read the rest HERE: )

FUSION CENTERS?!

How’s that for a wad of new-speak crap?

What a Fusion Center does is gather information. All kinds of information. About anyone. About you. You don’t have any control over it. It can be sold. It can be disseminated for any number of purposes, most of which have not one thing to do with keeping you, me, or Mary-Jane down the street one bit safer than we are right now – or thought we were before September 2001.

According to Sue Reingold, deputy program manager in the (NEWSPEAK ALERT!) Information Sharing Environment Office ( a federal office dedicated to “improving information sharing”) the office operates with “oversight that is well understood and transparent to the public.” Oh? I really must get my vision checked. Or, perhaps I just have to give someone my credit card information and let them take $49.95 for a peek at what they are looking at. Oh, never mind – they already have that information if they want it.

“Fusion centers are vital to state and local efforts to fight crime, including terrorism,” she said.

Here are some of the pieces of information that help us “fight terrorism”

• Wage and property records
• Traffic ticket records
• Credit reports
• Your cell phone number
• Your unlisted phone number
• Wage records
• Where you work
• Insurance claims
• Property records
• What kind of car(s) you own and what you paid for them
• Utility records
• And that cute little mole on your right butt cheek. Sorry.

This is not a usual post for me – but I find this all outrageous. I can’t help it. We (I say “we” because I’m told this is still a democracy) keep letting the powers that be put pretty patriotic spins on things that should scare us to death.

I find it DEEPLY offensive, in fact, I find it obscene, (but most would not agree with obscene and, as stated in the previous post, I don’t have a right to not be offended.) That the events of September 11th 2001 have been used, and continue to be used, to sanction violations of our right to privacy.

It was inevitable that such a tragedy would change our nation. That does NOT mean, however, that we have to just sit back and watch changes we believe to be wrong simply HAPPEN. Allowing things to just happen is wrong. And, at the risk of seeming overly dramatic (I wish I believed this was) are you familiar with the song “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” ? It was written for the play Cabaret – (Cabaret is set in Weinmar Germany during the rise of the Third Reich) the original intention was to show how easily people’s emotions can be played – particularly when they feel afraid and hard done by – and how that play on their emotions can lead them into committing wrongs they never believed they would.

Are we turning into Nazi Germany? I hope not, but our minds and our hearts are being played. I think it behooves us to pay attention.

And what about “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” ? Well, look at this and consider what happens when this same kind of nationalistic sentimentality is put to post 9/11 US imagery: