Now this is what I call letting the terrorists win.

what a bunch of freakin scaredy cats.

Ya know - Jesus had a simple message: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

And in the end, that's a purely defensive attitude.

It's the best defense against those who would harm us.

One would think a "Christian nation" might try it.

It's a lot less expensive and a lot more effective.

I know - no profit to be made.

Oh well.

Everything else they've tried to accomplish seems to have worked. They've taken away our basic right of Habeas Corpus. They've switched our military policy to accept pre-emptive wars. This is just another step in a long line of successes.

Top Ten Signs Your Country May Be Going Fascist

Check out Number Six.

Two things spring immediately to mind. One: the false positive rate on this thing is going to be HUGE. Many many people are going to be falsely accused of things due to this. And, as a secondary thing, the people who are supposed to be watching this are going to let legitimate positives slip through the cracks...I work in a hospital and I can tell you technology, as advanced as it is, is stupid. EKG (12 lead) machines give diagnostic labels to ekg's that are COMPLETELY off base routinely. The monitors are CONSTANTLY alarming, and no one really pays the slightest attention. If a patient is really crashing, we know because we are watching them with our own eyes, NOT listening to the monitor.

Two: How many people are going to lose their jobs for being falsely identified as 'having a brush with the law' as it was put in the article??? What happened to being innocent until proven guilty in a court of law?? I thought this was the purpose of routine background checks on employees--which also have their issues, but at least nothing shows up until it's a conviction....

I smell a massive lawsuit in the works. I also smell massive civil disobedience -- and destruction of the cameras by disgruntled citizens.

All presented in a cutesy-wootsy, gee-wiz, golly-willikers-ain't-that-neato-keen tone, as if they were doing a consumer-info piece on a new freekin' washing machine or something; y'know, just another breathless report on just another bit of high-tech gimcrackery, but with just enough "criminals" and "terrorists" (what's the friggin' difference, anyway?) thrown in to make John and Jane Doe - addled as they are by their fast and happy lives as mindless consumers anyway - register the proper Pavlovian responses.

Is this wretched nightmare over yet?

You might like this if you liked how the Nazi's rounded up Jews, Queers and anyone else who didn't have blue eyes, blonde hair or supported Jewish People and Spiritual People.

If this follows the same bungling track as the FBI computer systems, then we are safe.

What is with that organization? Violating our civil rights, and spying on those trying TO DO GOOD, DO RIGHT, such as Dr. King, anti-war demonstrators, animal rights activists, eco-activists, etc.

The FBI is an organization of evil, repressive bastards. I don't care how many TV series that they have trying to convince us otherwise, my perception is that he FBI is a kinder, gentler version of the KGB and other undemocratic secret police groups in Russia, North Korea, Iran, Egypt, etc. How are they any better?

On the other hand, look at how DNA information has been used to free convicted people or prevent the conviction of wrongly accused persons. On the face of it, all biometric information can do is say person X is person X, whether he is trying to pass himself off as person Y or person Y is trying to steal X's identity. If it works. The story mentions fingerprints as the gold standard, but lately there have been stories that fingerprint identification is as much art as it is science when used in crime investigations.

We're all the enemy to this government. "Eventually it will be everybody." "...used to keep unauthorized people out of secure places." "...fingerprints like snowflakes, no two are the same Wolf." Isn't there something about opinions being like a$$ho1es? Oh, and by the way
Big Brotha used all the "fascinating" data they got on Kelly and she's now in Gitmo.

Danny @ 13:

You might like this if you liked how the Nazi's rounded up Jews, Queers and anyone else who didn't have blue eyes, blonde hair or supported Jewish People and Spiritual People.

Exactly. This isn't a joke.

and since, as we all know the concept of innocent until proven guilty is unknown in corporate america, except at the upper levels, the mere reporting of an arrest for a criminal act will result in a job termination. no conviction necessary. but i'm sure the fbi has a plan to insure that the public suffers no undue harm from this release of information to employers. right?

Lets face it, obl won with one attack.

He changed this country from a great democracy to a police State.

Stop donating millions to these freaking Senators who approve this crap.

None of them are standing up and filibustering for us.

Not Obama not Clinton, none of them.

Give your money to disaster victims.

"...employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law. …"

Unless your an illegally immigrating brown skinner from Mexico/South America. The corporations will welcome you with open arms and no doubt be given an exemption to employ you at a fraction of the salary of the citizen you are replacing.

getalife @ 25:

Lets face it, obl won with one attack.

He changed this country from a great democracy to a police State.

Stop donating millions to these freaking Senators who approve this crap.

None of them are standing up and filibustering for us.

Not Obama not Clinton, none of them.

Give your money to disaster victims.

Television writers?

I'm sure the thinking is, "why should you worry if you're not doing anything wrong?"

Minority report.

Filthy Harry @ 1:

Now this is what I call letting the terrorists win.

I would disagree. This sort of thing has always been in the works because it's about getting political power and cover by taking easy security actions the public thinks it's OK with because terrorists and criminals will be identified and controlled more easily. In every country around the world, even ones where the government is very oppressive of its people, the public time and time again stands behind its leadership (again, bad or good) when there's a war to fight, or a security action being taken to fend of an unknown or undefinable threat perceived as outside of the culture.

Look at the way terrorism and crime is described in rhetoric, and you'll find that it's always defined as being amorphous, unknown, uncontrollable, outside. Terrorists are always overseas somewhere else, yet when a white guy hear goes to a mall and shoots people up and commits suicide, he was simply a murderer. His action would be criminal of course, but the point is about the language and how people perceive things because of it and its repetition over days, years, decades, even centuries.

This is not necessarily about letting terrorism win. It's about government trying to take more control under the guise of securing others. This will certainly make people secure, but it does as little for personal security as it does more for mass security. This is about the enduring human need to control, not about giving in to Osama, although he certainly hasn't helped. The problem is that this stuff is always doomed to fail on some level because people will start showing false positives in the system, people will be wrongfully accused, lives will be inadvertently destroyed, privacy will die, etc. etc. on down the line. All of this to feel safe from criminals, whose population is aggrandized to be larger than it realistically is.

Remember that Bushco tried getting unrestricted wire tapping well ahead of any 9-11 terrorism.

There is absolutely nothing new in this information.

Remember DARPA? Remember the Total Information Awareness Program?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office

For some reason I have two gin-scented tears trickling down the sides of my nose...
I think everything will be all right, though.

A big-brother state won't come in one fell swoop. It will grow inch-by-inch, chipping away your freedom one moment of privacy at a time. And always, always, promising its desperate need to protect public safety.

Undoubtedly the petty rulers have always wanted more power and control. The terrorists attacked America in the way that they did in order to change America. If our gov't uses that attack to justify their powergrab, the terrorists win.

And Bushco hasn't shown itself to be petty? They didn't show their lust for power until after 9-11? This is very foolish thinking. That the terrorists attacked us only hastened what has been in the works for a long time. Did the terrorists win? They helped, but they didn't win. Surely helping the process was their gambit, but they hardly invented the motive. Besides, they ultimately are the primary targets of all of this surveillance. The problem comes in when the surveillance starts missing the mark regularly onto innocent people, and while the cost to actually find a single criminal/terrorist skyrockets due to all the false positives.

I got into this subject with somebody recently. We know what an opportunist like Bush does with tragedies on the scale of 9-11 or Pearl Harbor, and we know what better (though still flawed) men do or are capable of. Bush took license to break domestic and international law in pursuing nationalized belligerence internationally with his tragedy; FDR (mostly) reformed a country and gave us the best years we've ever seen, coupled with the greatest and most important social reforms. But even FDR incarcerated Japanese Americans, and tried pulling his own view of the law around at certain points. This trend went public with McCarthy's Red Scare, and Nixon's declaring that if the president does something, anything, it's legal. I haven't even gotten to FISA yet.

Do not make the mistake of thinking this stuff wasn't already coming along. Osama and his ideological brethren are aiding and abetting the reduction in freedoms worldwide, but they didn't invent the goals. They, ironically, are the brothers of those in government who swear they will do everything in their power to protect us, even if our enslavement is deemed necessary.

Make any arbitrary law and then selectively enforce it. That's how Nixon fought the hippies.

Tim @ 38:

A billion dollars, yet the borders are left wide open.

They have to be to sell their muffins and cafe au lait, and maybe some books too.

justabill @ 16:

Does this sound like a good thing or a bad thing, Winston?

Answer wrong and win a trip to Room 101 in the Ministry of Love.

Even if they answered right they went to Room 101.

I think the limeys already have a system of cameras on street corners that can scan and look for people of certain facial types movements etc.

I wish we could get a map, some photos, or some more information about these Halliburton Camps or FEMA camps I hear are being built within the United States. That is a pretty huge and disturbing revelation if these internment camps are really being built.

I have a friend who always votes Republican. She's an agnostic (actually hates most, if not all, organized religions). She's for gay rights and a woman's right to choose. Her main issues are she hates paying taxes all together (although she understands they're necessary to an extent for government to even function) and she loves guns.

I asked her once why she thinks civilians should be allowed access to heavy weaponry. She told me that if the government has them, she should be able to have them to be able to defend herself against the government. Now this would seem to make some sense if you're goal is to defend yourself against an infringing government, but the anti-gun regulation crowd is the same crowd that's for the removal of the rights of individuals. She votes to support this group (Republicans) who is the biggest supporter of the government threats she wants to defend against with all of her guns. I'm pretty sure that, while they are the more pro-gun of the two major parties, they aren't going to allow for civilians to ever use heavy enough artillery to defend themselves against a government coming to take her away.

She's my friend, but the NRA member in her can make her a bit bat**** crazy at times.

" nothing new " ; " will never work " you people better inform yourself and stop being so gullible , once your biometrics is in the system , by definition it has already worked , it just matters what they are going to do with the data . Throw in "threat" rating system for travel and No Fly lists , can't you see what's happening and it's getting WORST .

Can't go get into Canada without a Passport or an RFID chip embedded into an ID card , with your address, employer , bank , and tons of other info .

It's not even a matter of opinion , the united States is turning into a total surveillance country , it's a FACT, just like in the U.K. where they have a camera for every 14 citizens , where you can't drive into London , w/o your car scanned for tags, license , insurance and aNY other reason they want to pull you over . IS THIS what you want .

Remember what corporation aided the government in aerial surveillance with a BLIMP , FUJI , the same ones that are investing in BIOMETRICS data collection . Also remember if you want to rely on incompetence by the government as a security blanket , you're beyond help, many private companies are involved in this assault on privacy and civil liberties .

BlueIndependent @ 41:

Osama was trained by these people. They were always on the same side.

Filthy Harry @ 1:

Now this is what I call letting the terrorists win.

Sorta makes you wonder who's playing who...

Who thinks this will change when a Dem gets in??

I have some beach front in Oklahoma for you... real reasonable...

Did anyone else notice the "it's for your own good" pitch threaded through? I mean, aren't you concerned that your child's - your very own, dear, sweet, innocent, precious child's - bus driver could be a monster sex pervert? What kind of parent are you?

And besides, the more information we have on you, the less likely you are to be falsely accused of something! So you see, it's actually all for your sake we do this. Really!

On another point, these systems do not decrease the risk of false accusation, they increase it because they are subject to an absurdly high rate of false positives. For example, if I recall, for face recognition it's like 20% even under ideal conditions. Didn't people notice that for the reporter to have her face scanned it was important for her to "stay very still?" The same is true for iris scans. So accurate information can only be compiled on actively cooperating suspects which means in turn that info gathered in real world conditions will be rife with errors.

And presumption leads to conclusions that reinforce previous conclusions. Does anyone remember the case of Brandon Mayfield? He is the Oregon lawyer who was accused of a connection to the Madrid bombings on the grounds of a latent fingerprint that three layers of FBI analysis declared was "100% verified" as Mayfield's index finger, a conclusion that turned out to be 100% wrong: not only wasn't it Mayfield's, it wasn't even an index finger. (Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose also discuss the case in Bill of Wrongs.) But he was a Muslim who had some connection to one of a group of jihadist wannabes, so presumption lead to conclusion, which lead to conclusion, which lead to....

And so it goes.

CoIntelPro @ 57:

BlueIndependent @ 41:

Osama was trained by these people. They were always on the same side.

Ya I know they were trained in the 80s by our leaders. They are not our "tools" anymore however.

I find it undeniably fascinating that, on the one hand, people in these forums will shriek like kittens being fed into ATMs when it comes to the government providing us with nationalized health services. On the other hand, you cry "big brother" when the government wants to expand its database of information concerning its populace.
If you can't trust the government with aspects of your personal life, how can you trust it to deliver your anti-seizure or blood-pressure medications on time?

Where are all those "terrorists" that we're supposed to be so damn frightened of? If so many people hate us with such passion, why aren't there attacks on North American soil every day? Look at how wide open the borders are. Anyone can just walk in with total impunity. The ports are absolute jokes when it comes to security. Every single day a nuclear bomb could be transported in in a shipping container. The airlines don't generally bother to check cargo. Yet their passengers are not allowed to bring liquids onboard? Why are the "terrorist plots" that they keep uncovering so blatantly, ridiculously phony? The only real terrorists out there are working with the security services of governments who stand to profit from the attacks. Look at the money that's being made in the security industry and see for yourself that the "terrorists" are nothing but agent provocateurs helping to ramp up the fear and enslave us all in the "Big Brother" state.

This is not a joking matter, but it is funny how we bash the media yet sites like crooks and liars is probably giving our names over to gestapo just to make a buck. You can't trust no one anymore. There is a Library guard coming over here, Have to go.

What comes around goes around, the information will be used for political purposes to push political 'dissidents' out of the FBI and every government agency in the country and to prevent political 'dissidents' from getting employed in the private sector. Death isn't nearly as frightening as living in a despotic and psychotic country. Intelligence isn't as valuable as wisdom, they may take all the 'intelligence' they desire to take but they won't have wisdom and that will defeat them. Peace FBI

Filthy Harry @ 1:

Now this is what I call letting the terrorists win.

qfmft dude, QFMFT

Pursang @ 46:

Instead of contributing our hard earned money to politicians we should be sending it to the ACLU. They're about our only hope to help put an end to (or at least slow it down) this erosion of our rights. Had the Democrats taken significant steps to put the brakes on BushCo I would be more than happy to support them with my money. Since they simply continued to hand Bush the money and the power to continue his assault on the Constitution I won't give them one red cent. There are good ones out there but it's time to make the good ones realize they need to do more to bring the bad ones around or else help us kick them to the curb. Democrats in Congress, police your own to help us get our country back.

ACLU...are you kidding me?! Talk about pushing the socialist agenda, they're at the head of the class!