I received this in an email, not sure of the source interesting read
Chris
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Massive surveillance net keeps track of Americans' travel

Mon Sep 24, 2007 8:13 am (PST)
I thought this was interesting given the discussion of computerized check points in Latin America

Massive surveillance net keeps track of Americans' travel

Massive surveillance net keeps track of Americans' travel -- down to the size of your hotel bed
Published: Saturday September 22, 2007

The Bush Administration has been collecting detailed records on the travel habits of Americans headed overseas, whether you fly, drive or take cruises abroad -- not simply your method of transit but the personal items you carry with you and the people you stay with, according to documents and statements obtained by the Washington Post.
They even keep sometimes keep track of what books you read. For as long as 15 years.
In a terrifying front-page article Saturday, the Post outlines the latest in US government surveillance.
According to officials, the records are intended "to assess the security threat posed by all travelers entering the country. Officials say the records, which are analyzed by the department's Automated Targeting System, help border officials distinguish potential terrorists from innocent people entering the country."
The new details suggest a much broader net than that. The details of the program were revealed when a group of activists requested copies of records on their travel and found someone had written a note about their flashlight carrying the symbol of a marijuana leaf.
"The Automated Targeting System has been used to screen passengers since the mid-1990s, but the collection of data for it has been greatly expanded and automated since 2002, according to former DHS officials," the Post said.
"The federal government is trying to build a surveillance society," said John Gilmore, a civil liberties activist in San Francisco whose records were requested and then first revealed in Wired News. The government, he said, "may be doing it with the best or worst of intentions. . . . But the job of building a surveillance database and populating it with information about us is happening largely without our awareness and without our consent."
According to Wired, passengers pulled aside for extra screening are those most likely to enter the record books. Gilmore had been pulled aside and border patrol officials took notes of his belongings. Read about the document collection at the Identity Project here.
Homeland Security officials defended the program.
"I flatly reject the premise that the department is interested in what travelers are reading," DHS spokesman Russ Knocke told the paper. "We are completely uninterested in the latest Tom Clancy novel that the traveler may be reading."
According to the Post, "The DHS database generally includes 'passenger name record' (PNR) information, as well as notes taken during secondary screenings of travelers. PNR data -- often provided to airlines and other companies when reservations are made -- routinely include names, addresses and credit-card information, as well as telephone and e-mail contact details, itineraries, hotel and rental car reservations, and even the type of bed requested in a hotel."
The millions of travelers whose records are kept by the government are generally unaware of what their records say, and the government has not created an effective mechanism for reviewing the data and correcting any errors, activists said, the paper said.
The activists alleged that the data collection effort, as carried out now, violates the Privacy Act, which bars the gathering of data related to Americans' exercise of their First Amendment rights, such as their choice of reading material or persons with whom to associate, according to the report.
The full Post article is here.
http://rawstory. com//news/ 2007/Massive_ surveillance_ net_keeps_ track_of_ 0922.html
~~~
Collecting of Details on Travelers Documented
U.S. Effort More Extensive Than Previously Known

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 22, 2007; A01

The U.S. government is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and even the books that travelers have carried, according to documents obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by government officials.
The personal travel records are meant to be stored for as long as 15 years, as part of the Department of Homeland Security's effort to assess the security threat posed by all travelers entering the country. Officials say the records, which are analyzed by the department's Automated Targeting System, help border officials distinguish potential terrorists from innocent people entering the country.
But new details about the information being retained suggest that the government is monitoring the personal habits of travelers more closely than it has previously acknowledged. The details were learned when a group of activists requested copies of official records on their own travel. Those records included a description of a book on marijuana that one of them carried and small flashlights bearing the symbol of a marijuana leaf.
The Automated Targeting System has been used to screen passengers since the mid-1990s, but the collection of data for it has been greatly expanded and automated since 2002, according to former DHS officials.
Officials yesterday defended the retention of highly personal data on travelers not involved in or linked to any violations of the law. But civil liberties advocates have alleged that the type of information preserved by the department raises alarms about the government's ability to intrude into the lives of ordinary people. The millions of travelers whose records are kept by the government are generally unaware of what their records say, and the government has not created an effective mechanism for reviewing the data and correcting any errors, activists said.
The activists alleged that the data collection effort, as carried out now, violates the Privacy Act, which bars the gathering of data related to Americans' exercise of their First Amendment rights, such as their choice of reading material or persons with whom to associate. They also expressed concern that such personal data could one day be used to impede their right to travel.
"The federal government is trying to build a surveillance society," said John Gilmore, a civil liberties activist in San Francisco whose records were requested by the Identity Project, an ad-hoc group of privacy advocates in California and Alaska. The government, he said, "may be doing it with the best or worst of intentions. . . . But the job of building a surveillance database and populating it with information about us is happening largely without our awareness and without our consent."
Gilmore's file, which he provided to The Washington Post, included a note from a Customs and Border Patrol officer that he carried the marijuana-related book "Drugs and Your Rights." "My first reaction was I kind of expected it," Gilmore said. "My second reaction was, that's illegal."
DHS officials said this week that the government is not interested in passengers' reading habits, that the program is transparent, and that it affords redress for travelers who are inappropriately stymied. "I flatly reject the premise that the department is interested in what travelers are reading," DHS spokesman Russ Knocke said. "We are completely uninterested in the latest Tom Clancy novel that the traveler may be reading."
But, Knocke said, "if there is some indication based upon the behavior or an item in the traveler's possession that leads the inspection officer to conclude there could be a possible violation of the law, it is the front-line officer's duty to further scrutinize the traveler." Once that happens, Knocke said, "it is not uncommon for the officer to document interactions with a traveler that merited additional scrutiny."
He said that he is not familiar with the file that mentions Gilmore's book about drug rights, but that generally "front-line officers have a duty to enforce all laws within our authority, for example, the counter-narcotics mission." Officers making a decision to admit someone at a port of entry have a duty to apply extra scrutiny if there is some indication of a violation of the law, he said.

The retention of information about Gilmore's book was first disclosed this week in Wired News. Details of how the ATS works were disclosed in a Federal Register notice last November. Although the screening has been in effect for more than a decade, data for the system in recent years have been collected by the government from more border points, and also provided by airlines -- under U.S. government mandates -- through direct electronic links that did not previously exist.
The DHS database generally includes "passenger name record" (PNR) information, as well as notes taken during secondary screenings of travelers. PNR data -- often provided to airlines and other companies when reservations are made -- routinely include names, addresses and credit-card information, as well as telephone and e-mail contact details, itineraries, hotel and rental car reservations, and even the type of bed requested in a hotel.
The records the Identity Project obtained confirmed that the government is receiving data directly from commercial reservation systems, such as Galileo and Sabre, but also showed that the data, in some cases, are more detailed than the information to which the airlines have access.
Ann Harrison, the communications director for a technology firm in Silicon Valley who was among those who obtained their personal files and provided them to The Post, said she was taken aback to see that her dossier contained data on her race and on a European flight that did not begin or end in the United States or connect to a U.S.-bound flight.
"It was surprising that they were gathering so much information without my knowledge on my travel activities, and it was distressing to me that this information was being gathered in violation of the law," she said.
James P. Harrison, director of the Identity Project and Ann Harrison's brother, obtained government records that contained another sister's phone number in Tokyo as an emergency contact. "So my sister's phone number ends up being in a government database," he said. "This is a lot more than just saying who you are, your date of birth."
Edward Hasbrouck, a civil liberties activist who was a travel agent for more than 15 years, said that his file contained coding that reflected his plan to fly with another individual. In fact, Hasbrouck wound up not flying with that person, but the record, which can be linked to the other passenger's name, remained in the system. "The Automated Targeting System," Hasbrouck alleged, "is the largest system of government dossiers of individual Americans' personal activities that the government has ever created."
He said that travel records are among the most potentially invasive of records because they can suggest links: They show who a traveler sat next to, where they stayed, when they left. "It's that lifetime log of everywhere you go that can be correlated with other people's movements that's most dangerous," he said. "If you sat next to someone once, that's a coincidence. If you sat next to them twice, that's a relationship. "
Stewart Verdery, former first assistant secretary for policy and planning at DHS, said the data collected for ATS should be considered "an investigative tool, just the way we do with law enforcement, who take records of things for future purposes when they need to figure out where people came from, what they were carrying and who they are associated with. That type of information is extremely valuable when you're trying to thread together a plot or you're trying to clean up after an attack."
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in August 2006 said that "if we learned anything from Sept. 11, 2001, it is that we need to be better at connecting the dots of terrorist-related information. After Sept. 11, we used credit-card and telephone records to identify those linked with the hijackers. But wouldn't it be better to identify such connections before a hijacker boards a plane?" Chertoff said that comparing PNR data with intelligence on terrorists lets the government "identify unknown threats for additional screening" and helps avoid "inconvenient screening of low-risk travelers."
Knocke, the DHS spokesman, added that the program is not used to determine "guilt by association. " He said the DHS has created a program called DHS Trip to provide redress for travelers who faced screening problems at ports of entry.
But DHS Trip does not allow a traveler to challenge an agency decision in court, said David Sobel, senior counsel with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has sued the DHS over information concerning the policy underlying the ATS. Because the system is exempted from certain Privacy Act requirements, including the right to "contest the content of the record," a traveler has no ability to correct erroneous information, Sobel said.
Zakariya Reed, a Toledo firefighter, said in an interview that he has been detained at least seven times at the Michigan border since fall 2006. Twice, he said, he was questioned by border officials about "politically charged" opinion pieces he had published in his local newspaper. The essays were critical of U.S. policy in the Middle East, he said. Once, during a secondary interview, he said, "they had them printed out on the table in front of me."
Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
http://www.washingt onpost.com/ wp-dyn/content/ article/2007/ 09/21/AR20070921 02347_pf. html

I really dont think this is new;
is there any country out there dont watch its citizen?
they even have a file on our presidents; what do you think all those agencies out there doing? such as FBI,NSA.CIA only thing is new now you got new agencies doing such a job,Department of homeland securities,
and this is not a isolated thing only for US. Every goverment out there doing the same thing, regardless of the idiology
the way I look at it; why vorry if you dont do anything wrong.
collecting info is one thing; using them wrongly is another; thats where is the different kicks in beetween the idiologies, in democracy it would be much harder to use personal info against some body; but other system will used it regardless of right or wrong.
this is in human nature to trying to know what others doing? or what they are up to. Its happening in our household we all ways want to know what are kids are up to, or neighbors or co workers.
isnt the menagement job all ways trying to know what is workers up to?
why do you think all major corp. do have some sort of own police? you may not know it, but they all do.Every systems whether, Fashizm, dictatorship or even in democracies will monitor openly or secretly its citizens. I think this has more to do with self defence. So like I said I dont like it but there is no way it will stop;
as long as you dont do wrong why worry?

(snip)
The Bush Administration has been collecting detailed records on the travel habits of Americans headed overseas,....
Damn Bush!!!! It's all his fault!!!! :D:D

....They even keep sometimes keep track of what books you read. For as long as 15 years.
Wow! And I thought a president could only hold office for 2 terms of 4 years. :D

In a terrifying front-page article Saturday,
Oooooooh! I'm scared. :eek:
...the Post outlines
Oh. Never mind.... :rolleyes:

Please note the prolific use of smilies & the heavy use of sarcasm in this post. :cool:

:eek: How many times are we going to let them disguise violating our Constitution rights under the facade of self defense or the war on terror?
:fish:

If your not doing anything wrong why worry about it?

It just depends on who is the judge of that. I still feel freedom is not the government checking on what do on my own time, where I go on vacation, or what time I call my mother.
:fish:

I'm wondering just which rights are being violated here? What I gleaned from that is that they are retaining information on travelers, information obtained by what is publicly observed.

Keep in mind that when in public, you have no privacy. You may be photographed or video recorded by anyone, private or government.

When you travel commercially, you are submitting yourself to a system run by the federal govt. Airports are under federal, not private, control. So any information, anything you do, say or display in an airport is not only in public, but in a venue under the utter control of the federal govt. You must submit yourself to security searches of your person. Your baggage is subject to search. You know this, none of it is new.

It's not as if they're searching your home or business without a warrant or any thing like that.

So please, enlighten me: Exactly what constitutional rights are being violated here? I'd like to know, bc I haven't been able to figure that out.

I don't fall into the "if you're not doing anything wrong, why worry about it?" camp. If I want to pull the shades on my windows, that's my right. The BOR specifically protects against warrantless search & seizure & that right is to be protected, along with others. I'm just missing what's being violated here.

If your not doing anything wrong why worry about it?

I'm sure they say that a lot in fascist and communist countries

but the personal items you carry with you and the people you stay with, They even keep sometimes keep track of what books you read. For as long as 15 years.
But the job of building a surveillance database and populating it with information about us is happening largely without our awareness and without our consent.
According to Wired, passengers pulled aside for extra screening are those most likely to enter the record books. Gilmore had been pulled aside and border patrol officials took notes of his belongings. Read about the document collection at the Identity According to the Post, "The DHS database generally includes 'passenger name record' (PNR) information, as well as notes taken during secondary screenings of travelers. PNR data -- often provided to airlines and other companies when reservations are made -- routinely include names, addresses and credit-card information, as well as telephone and e-mail contact details, itineraries, hotel and rental car reservations, and even the type of bed requested in a hotel."
The millions of travelers whose records are kept by the government are generally unaware of what their records say, and the government has not created an effective mechanism for reviewing the data and correcting any errors, activists said, the paper said.
The activists alleged that the data collection effort, as carried out now, violates the Privacy Act, which bars the gathering of data related to Americans' exercise of their First Amendment rights, such as their choice of reading material or persons with whom to associate, according to the report.


I would consider this as a constitutional violation and I would quote more but we have to save something for tomorrow.
:fish:

:iagree:I'm sure they say that a lot in fascist and communist countries

:iagree: My point.
:fish:

The Privacy Act was a law passed by congress, not a constitutional right. Whether it's being violated I dunno, I'd have to go back & read it.

The govt simply knowing what you read or who you associate is not a violation of 1st amendment rights. Preventing you from reading something would be censorship. Preventing you from associating with someone would violate your 1st amendment rights of free association. But simply knowing these things without interfering with them, I'm still lost as to what rights are being violated.

How do they know who you stay with? There are not enough people to simply follow every traveler around & record where they go, but even if they did that, your public movements are exactly that: Public. They may be observed by anyone. I can follow you around & record every place you go & I have not violated your rights. Most likely they get that bit of information from the traveler. If you voluntarily tell them something, oh well. Your bad, if you don't want them to know something don't tell them. Keep your mouth shut.

"I can follow you around & record every place you go & I have not violated your rights"

I think thats called stalking. :awink:

Think about what paparazzi do with celebrities.

I can hire a PI to watch anyone I have an interest in. he can record dates, times, locations, people met with, take pictures, etc. I can do the same thing myself if I have the time & wish to.

I'm sure they say that a lot in fascist and communist countries

you still have right to free speech in this country; and also this is not new its being done all the time whether you know it or not.
You quote Gunny; I also said exact same thing; when I said that; I was trying to say it dont metter how you feel about it, they will do such thing anyway; so if you dont do anything wrong and you cant stop it so why worry for some thing you have no power to change it.

"I can follow you around & record every place you go & I have not violated your rights"

I think thats called stalking. :awink:
"It's me again Margaret!" "He he he he..." :D

"Any person who willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows, harasses, or cyberstalks another person commits the offense of stalking."

The govt. has a right/duty to investigate & or gather intel on a person if they are suspected of a crime.
The govt. is also free to gather intel on anyone to determine a pattern of criminal activity so long as the information obtained was gathered via public channels. This is basically the "plain view doctrine."

Example:
If a cop is walking down the sidewalk in front of your house and looks through your open window and observes several marijuana plants on your dining room table, he has the right to sieze those plants and make an arrest. In a case like that, the officer will get a search warrant for the house unless it is reasonable to believe that the evidence may be destroyed if it is not secured right now. Then he may enter your home by whatever reasonable means necessary and secure you & the evidence.

If the govt. is obtaining information that they have a right to see, airline records, etc..., or actually have someone watching you from a public place, then no rights are being violated and no laws are broken.

What about the old "Carnivor" program? It has a new name now, but the FBI designed this program to "read" every email on every server in the U.S. and recognize certian patterns of words. If an email fit the pattern, it was flagged & reviewed by a human to determine if it was a threat to national security.

Then there's the software that listens in on phone calls for certian words & then flags them to be listened to....

Or how about the govt. database of everyones DNA tha has been collected from the delivery room....

Oh. Wait. That last one was from an X-Files episode....... Nevermind. :D :D :D

I'm no Jack Bower but I bet a lot of info they get on terrorist cells etc is gleaned from just such activities, get real do you think anyone gives a rats ass what you ordered on pay per view,...IMO if someone out there doesn't monitor every scrap of information they can get their hands on and pick and sort through all the worthless crap to find that one "save the day" piece of information there will be a lot more than sky scrapers crashing to the earth.

I'm no Jack Bower but I bet a lot of info they get on terrorist cells etc is gleaned from just such activities, get real do you think anyone gives a rats ass what you ordered on pay per view,...IMO if someone out there doesn't monitor every scrap of information they can get their hands on and pick and sort through all the worthless crap to find that one "save the day" piece of information there will be a lot more than sky scrapers crashing to the earth.

It's generally referred to in the 'biz' as sifting,and it 's done electronically multiple times.1 sift will catch key words and order,than a further sift,and on and on until enough sifted material has been sufficiently collected to justify a search warrant.Then the tin pans are tossed aside and the backhoes come in and really start digging.
I am actually 'sifting' as we speak.

Good on you bro
I say sift away!
Like I said if you don't have anything to hide why should you care,..not like they are staring at your womans rack while she is in the shower

Good on you bro
I say sift away!
Like I said if you don't have anything to hide why should you care,..not like they are staring at your womans rack while she is in the shower

Appreciate it ,Gunny.In a few years,trained baboons will be doing this.

Good on you bro
I say sift away!
Like I said if you don't have anything to hide why should you care,..not like they are staring at your womans rack while she is in the shower

like I said you would fit right in in a communist or fascist country

once you get used to that, who decides what is wrong?

you might agree with whoever is in charge now, but who will be charge in the future?

You really trust your government and authority so much to let them monitor your whole life?

There has already been instances of the government spying on anti-war protesters, in the past and using spying programs to spy on political opponents.

You really trust your government and authority so much to let them monitor your whole life?

.

No and the gov. doesn't monitor your whole life or even snippets of fractions ,regardless of what you concoct in your mind.Little less paranoia and a little more reason. Furthermore,if you knew all the controls and practices in place,even for a inter-agency internal investigation, that are designed to eliminate abuse;even Rany Weaver would sleep with both eyes shut.

'Sides the gov. can find out more about average ,law-abiding citizens thru venues that you are fully aware of then going thru your e-files .It's the criminal intent in practice that throws flags.

And I always like it when someone uses the example of monitoring of activist.What is often left out is the fact that some organizations have some very radical arms.ALF/ELF are monitored as domestic terrorism threats.Have been for over 14 years.Lest we forget that a on a Thanksgiving night many years ago, 3 people crept onto an alert bomber pad and proceeded to vandalize a high priority aircraft capable of nuclear delivery,rendering the aircraft useless. Greenpeace was the culprit and Griffis AFB was the target.Sounds like national security interest to me.

I for one am glad they are paying attention. It lets me sleep better. (;)did you hear that guys .... I'm on your side, in case your tapping this thread:D)

the elf is joke, have they ever even killed anyone? the biggest thing they have done is burned some stuff, a bunch of trust fund hippies, honestly there are small street gangs in every major city that is scarier then them. The street gangs actually kill people.

I was talking about this

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10454316/

The Defense Department document is the first inside look at how the U.S. military has stepped up intelligence collection inside this country since 9/11, which now includes the monitoring of peaceful anti-war and counter-military recruitment groups.

ny er
damn dude don't be so paranoid,..unless of course you have some deep dark secrets,..
I'm not going to assume you are from New York, as bad as I want to,.....(you know the old saying),...................but...........what if some of the information these " communist or facist wannabees" gathered while secretly trying to overthrow the government and control your mind, while you are SECRETLY placing your bet on the giants game to your bookie could have prevented us from having a blank spot in the skyline at ground zero,.......
I'm sure some of this horrid big brother monitoring of your very being has thwarted many, many attacks already.
Lighten up man, their not gonna tell anyone you rented blades of glory from blockbuster,........ 3 times :cool:

I wouldn't be so paranoid if they would just stop watching me.

ok, I am not really paranoid, its just principle of letting government watch you more and more under the idea of its more safe, you guys never heard that ben franklin quote

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

I wouldn't be so paranoid if they would just stop watching me.

:eek:

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8RTSNE84&show_article=1

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8RTSNE84&show_article=1
"IBM says this approach might be more effective than relying on a bleary-eyed employee to monitor video screens. "Studies have shown people fall asleep," Docknevich said. " :slap: Wow! I wish I could have come up with that one. :rolleyes:

"Jonathan Schachter, a public policy lecturer at Northwestern University, said there are no studies that show cameras reduce crime. "
A camera "reduces" crime by allowing law enforcement, and a jury, to see exactly what happened & who did it, thereby increasing the chances of capturing the offender.

"And the idea that placing cameras near "strategic assets" would prevent a terrorist attack is "absurd," he said. "
Hmmmm.... let's see...
Camera recognizes a suspicious activity.
Alarm sounds.
Human reviews suspicious activity & determines that it is indeed suspicious.
Patrol car is dispatched to location and locates suspicious item/person/vehicle before bad things happen.
Terrorist attack has just been prevented.
:D :D


On a similar note;
You're driving down I-75 and notice a cop on the side of the road. You first assume that he's running radar, but your radar detector hasn't gone off. You then think that maybe he's doing some paperwork or sleeping or something and you continue on down the road.
Little do you realize that you tag has just been photographed, ran through the computer to recognize the tag number & state, and compared against the national list of stolen vehicles & license plates. All in about 1/16th of a second.

Just one of the newer law enforcement tools coming to a road near you. :D

Thousands of lives have been saved by their "listening"...personally I am very glad they are doing it....
I think if they wanted to listen in on my life they may find themselves very freakin bored...
And the scumbags they are listening to only want to take away your life..not your rights

ok, I am not really paranoid, its just principle of letting government watch you more and more under the idea of its more safe, you guys never heard that ben franklin quote


If I can give you any assurance,monitoring of any kind is still conducted in very controlled enviroments and circumstances.Even when it involves people who know they can be subjected to monitoring (folks who work in sensitive/classified positions)while on duty,it still requires some hoop jumps.

I'm with you Gunny.

Funny how many of the same folk who don't trust the government to run your healthcare for some reason trust them when it comes to monitoring and collecting personal information. Why is that?

Funny how some folks who don't trust the government with collecting personal information for the purpose of solving or preventing crime or for purposes of national defense during a time of war are often huge supporters of having the govt take over their health care, especially considering the highly personal nature of the information they will need to do that. Why is that?

Don't misunderstand my position. I do not necessarily *trust* them when it comes to collecting all this data. I have simply asked the person who hollered about constitutional rights being violated to clearly explain which rights those are, as I seem to be confused on that aspect of it. The closest explanation so far seems to be possible Privacy Act violations, which if true can be challenged & fought in court by anyone so effected.

Since I have not travelled by public conveyance in many years I don't know whether I would have any legal standing in that regard.

And the scumbags they are listening to only want to take away your life..not your rights

yeah but come on, those cave dwellers don't have the power to really hurt America, no matter what they do, kill some people, blow some stuff up, they can't change the way Americans live, we are the most powerful nation in the world, we have to volunteer to give up rights and freedoms

If we start losing freedoms and rights it will because we give them away them, not because some Arabs took them

If your not doing anything wrong why worry about it?

That's the ultimate in big-brother-speak. Wake up!, you're not a ward of the state. Prisoners are constantly watched.

Here are a few reasons:


The watchers are fallible. People who watch you might blackmail you, frame you, etc. Think Ruby Ridge.

What is 'right' today, might be 'wrong' tomorrow. Nothing like a little history to follow you around.

Finally, enough of my money is already being spent on BS. This is not an empire, it is a government for the people *BY THE PEOPLE*, not a huge beurocracy which feeds itself.


I think it is huge failure of our education system that people don't even know the type of government of the country they live in. What does 'freedom' mean?

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8RTSNE84&show_article=1

I don't like it. It smells of feet & ass.

That's the ultimate in big-brother-speak. Wake up!, you're not a ward of the state. Prisoners are constantly watched.

Here are a few reasons:


The watchers are fallible. People who watch you might blackmail you, frame you, etc. Think Ruby Ridge.

What is 'right' today, might be 'wrong' tomorrow. Nothing like a little history to follow you around.

Finally, enough of my money is already being spent on BS. This is not an empire, it is a government for the people *BY THE PEOPLE*, not a huge beurocracy which feeds itself.



:toast::toast::toast::whip: Don't tread on me.

Funny how many of the same folk who don't trust the government to run your healthcare for some reason trust them when it comes to monitoring and collecting personal information. Why is that?

Now I like this one:D:D:D
as long as they dont tell me how to live my life, They can watch all they want; I really dont think that will take away anything; quality of my life
by doing such monitoring happens to they catch few criminal or terorist thats even better.
as to Sremsins point;
yes I trust the government %100 percent with my healthcare
Reason if they do such a bad job; I still can do something about it; Like not to elect them again; But I could not say that, for insurance companies; they have being sucking blood out of every American for years; Yet we can do the dammed thing about it!!!!!!!!!!

I don't like it. It smells of feet & ass.

:moon::moon::moon: :lol::lol::rofl::rofl::rofl:

The definition of a true paranoid is one who is in possession of all of the facts. :eek:

I don't like it. It smells of feet & ass.

It smells like a sack full of ***********************************s.

But, so long as the stuff is used only to see & record what happens out in public, whatcha gonna do? Chicago, that's the den of democrats in the country that're doing that one.

It smells like a sack full of ***********************************s.

But, so long as the stuff is used only to see & record what happens out in public, whatcha gonna do? Chicago, that's the den of democrats in the country that're doing that one.

I wonder if Kaan like the windy city?:D

You have a pm, Wayward.

The definition of a true paranoid is one who is in possession of all of the facts. :eek:

:rofl: I like that quote!

More of it:

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-bloomberg-surveillance,0,3072714,print.story