System Intended to Protect Children Under Fire for Overzealousness
An obese girl is yanked from her parents in Arizona. A New York
couple loses custody of their son because they refuse to drug him with
Ritalin. A Colorado boy is stripped and examined by school officials
because he said he’d been spanked one morning. A Christian mother loses
her daughter for teaching forgiveness.
Prudent precaution on the part of America’s child protective services agencies or proof positive of a system run amok?
Source: Fox News.com, February 06, 2002
Supermarket cards threat to privacy?
Privacy advocates say a wealth of data is being collected by
supermarkets via electronic shopper cards and that the information could
be linked with other biometric technology to form in-depth personal
databases without a person’s permission or knowledge.
In addition, say some card experts, food store chains that employ
e-cards as a savings benefit to shoppers may actually be inflating
regular prices before applying shopper card "discounts," thus negating
any real savings.
Source: WorldNetDaily, February 2, 2002
Bill would give governors absolute power
Could state governors order the collection of all data and records on
citizens, ban firearms, take control of private property and quarantine
entire cities? The answer is yes – if governors and state legislatures
adopted a new "model" bill currently under consideration.
Source: WorldNetDaily, January 10, 2002
New Drivers’ Licenses Study Underway
The government is working with the states to develop a new generation
of drivers’ licenses that could be checked anywhere and would contain
electronically stored information such as
fingerprints for the country’s 184 million licensed drivers.
Source: Daily News Yahoo. January 8, [2002]
Inside the War Room
Without seeking the approval of or even consulting Congress, Bush has
significantly increased the powers of federal law enforcement, shrunk
the attorney-client privilege for those suspected of being terrorists
and detained thousands of Arab men without due process. He has granted
himself the power to try terrorist suspects in secret military tribunals
rather than in open civilian court, and he has signed orders
eliminating some of the restrictions governing the conduct of CIA
operatives abroad. He even signed an order making it more difficult for
historians to get access to presidential papers.
Source: Time, December 31, p. 120
A Pitch for Smart Postal Stamps
In an effort to eliminate terrorist threats such as anthrax that are
delivered by mail, the U.S. Postal Service is considering the
implementation of "smart stamps" that would trace mail and identify
senders.
Among the suggestions proposed by the Committee on Government Reform, which oversees the USPS,
is one that would require postal customers to show identification
before buying stamps, making it nearly impossible to send anonymous
letters.
Source: wired.com Dec. 19, 2001
Leahy blasts White House over terror probe practices
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday sharply
criticized the Bush administration for a series of practices it has
adopted in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, calling them a
"marked departure" from long-held
jurisprudence customs.
Citing President Bush’s decision to allow military tribunals to try
non-U.S. suspect terrorists, the Justice Department’s decision to
monitor phone conversations between attorneys and their clients in
terrorism cases, and the widespread detention of possible suspects and
immigration violators, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, said at a
committee hearing that the Bush administration was going well beyond new
anti-terrorism tools Congress granted in a bill passed in October.
Source: CNN.com, November 29, 2001
Bush Defends Secret Tribunals for Terrorism Suspects
President Bush told federal prosecutors yesterday that secret
military trials for some foreign terrorism suspects could help prevent
U.S. legal protections from being used to undermine national security.
Source: Washington Post (online), November 30, 2001
Legal Scholars Criticize Wording Of Bush Order
Accused Can Be Detained Indefinitely
President Bush’s order empowering him to initiate military trials for
suspected foreign terrorists also appears to permit the indefinite
detention, without trial, of anyone the president determines is
"subject" to the order, according to constitutional scholars and legal
experts who have studied the directive.
Source: Washington Post.(online), December 3, 2001
‘Snooping on Allies Embarrasses U.S.
Blackmail, lies and deceit may be the only fitting
description of the 1993 Seattle Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or
APEC, summit where dignitaries from 17 countries are reported to have
been placed under electronic surveillance by American agents. As Insight
first reported last month, the Clinton administration is said by
intelligence and security specialists — who admitted being involved — to
have bugged the conclave and then provided classified secrets to the
Democratic National Committee, or DNC (See "Sex, Spies and Videotape at
Clinton’s APEC Summit," Sept. 29). This in turn allegedly was used as
bait to barter with potential big-buck donors for large contributions to
the Democratic coffers, sources in and out of government claim.
Source: Insight Online, October 20, 1997
Scientist ‘killed Amazon indians to test race theory’
Thousands of South American indians were infected with
measles, killing hundreds, in order to for US scientists to study the
effects on primitive societies of natural selection, according to a book
out next month.
The book accuses James Neel, the geneticist who headed a
long-term project to study the Yanomami people of Venezuela in the
mid-60s, of using a virulent measles vaccine to spark off an epidemic
which killed hundreds and probably thousands.
Source: Guardian Newspapers, The Observer, September 23, 2000
Spy Cams Planned for Honeymooner Haven
A government plan to post high-tech surveillance cameras
along the Niagara River to scan for illegal immigrants sneaking in from
Canada has neighbors furious — and drawing their blinds.
The $6 million plan calls for four cameras to top
65-foot towers along a 7-mile stretch beginning at the base of Niagara
Falls, where western New York State meets Ontario, Canada — considered a
hotspot for people-smuggling operations.
Source: Fox News, September 22, 2000
Federal agencies share taxpayer info from Web sites
In a survey of online-privacy protections at
government-run Web sites, the General Accounting Office found that 23 of
70 [federal] agencies surveyed have disclosed personal information
gathered from Web sites to third parties, mostly other government
agencies. But at least four agencies were found sharing information with
private entities.
Source: Scripps Howard News Service, September 7, 2000
Palm Beach, Florida-based telecommunications company has developed a
miniature digital monitoring device that can be implanted in people,
intended to assist in locating missing children or for monitoring the
heart rate of at-risk patients.
Source: CNN News, December 20, 1999
To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to require the registration of handguns, and for other purposes.
Woman who questioned Gore now faces IRS inquiry
The woman who sharply questioned Vice President Al Gore
at a town-hall meeting about Juanita Broaddrick’s rape accusation
against President Clinton has become the subject of an inquiry by the
Internal Revenue Service.
Source: The Washington Times Online, August 30, 2000
I’m talking about those Internal Revenue Service agents
who show up at your house or office after you dare to criticize, expose
or embarrass a member of the Clinton-Gore administration.
Source: WorldNetDaily, August 24, 2000
A Census Bureau publication called "How People Use the
Census" confirms that the data collected is used for purposes wholly
unrelated to the apportionment of House members. Census data determines
the level of federal funding for social welfare programs like those
pertaining to job training, state-run education, publicly subsidized
health care, and nutritional supplements. A previous president of the
National County and City Health Officials asserts that census data is
necessary to "target interventions in a population."
Source: WorldNetDaily, June 24, 2000
While seated on a train headed for Pusan, South Korea —
sandwiched in between a major in South Korean naval intelligence and a
U.S. Army colonel — WND’s roving international correspondent Anthony
LoBaido was introduced to the shadowy world of remote viewing — a
psychic information-gathering technique employed for decades by the U.S.
Defense
Department to bolster its intelligence efforts.
Source: WorldNetDaily, June 3, 2000
Clinton-Gore Administration Violated Tripp’s Privacy
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
ruled Monday that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) violated Linda
Tripp’s privacy when it released information from her personnel file to
the New Yorker magazine.
"Evidence that Linda Tripp’s privacy was violated goes
to prove that the same thing occurred with the nine hundred-plus
government FBI files improperly obtained by the Clinton-Gore White
House," stated Larry Klayman, Judicial Watch’s Chairman and General
Counsel.
Source: Judical Watch, 3/8/2000
The Clinton Team and Blackmail
After the 1994 elections, when the Republicans took control of the
House of Representatives, the Clinton administration ran an alleged
dirt-digging operation out of the Office of the White House Chief of
Staff, says Gary Aldrich, a former senior FBI special agent on White
House duty at the time. “They hired upwards of 36 lawyers to staff the
operation to handle 40 different cases,” Aldrich tells Insight. “Once it
became known that they had such an operation, then the blackmail itself
took place.” It all came in handy when the House impeached President
Clinton. “People like [James] Carville and [George] Stephanopoulos said
in the media that there would be a ‘scorched-earth policy’ and that
everyone who had skeletons in their closet would be exposed if they
didn’t back off the impeachment policy,” Aldrich says.
Source: Insight Online, 06/19/00
Links to their testimonies
A major government report on privacy in 1973 outlined
many of the concerns with the use and misuse of the Social Security
Number that show a striking resemblance to the problems that witnesses
have outlined this week. Although the term "identify theft" was not yet
in use, Records Computers and the Rights of Citizens described the risks
of a "Standard Universal Identifier," how the number was promoting
invasive profiling, and that many of the uses were clearly inconsistent
with the original purpose of the 1936 Act. The report recommended
several limitations on the use of the SSN and specifically said that
legislation should be adopted "prohibiting use of an SSN, or any number
represented as an SSN for promotional or commercial purposes."
Source: Electronic Privacy Information Center, May 11, 2000
In what sounds like something from one of Ian Fleming’s or George
Orwell’s books, President Clinton signed off on the installation of
eavesdropping devices on the phones of White House staffers,
WorldNetDaily has learned.
The secret bug means there’s a strong likelihood that audio-tape
recordings of personal White House phone conversations, as well as White
House staff meetings, exist
Source: WorldNetDaily, May 11, 2000
Concluding his two-day "school reform tour," President
Clinton yesterday said home-schooled children should "have to prove that
they’re learning on a regular basis" — or be forced to go to school.
"I think that states should explicitly acknowledge the
option of home schooling, because it’s going to be done anyway," Clinton
said. "It is done in every state of the country and therefore the best
thing to do is to get the home schoolers organized," he said.
Source: WorldNetDaily, May 5, 2000
The number of court-authorized wiretaps for criminal investigations
rose again in 1999, continuing a 20-year trend of increased
surveillance. According to a report released today by the Administrative
Office of the U.S. Courts, court authorized surveillance orders were up
two percent from 1998, to 1,350 in 1999.
Source: Administrative Office of the United States Courts
The evil incident to invasion of the privacy of the telephone is far
greater than that involved in tampering with the mails. Whenever a
telephone line is tapped, the privacy of the persons at both ends of the
line is invaded, and all conversations between them upon any subject,
and although proper, confidential, and privileged, may be overheard.
Moreover, the tapping of one man’s telephone line involves the tapping
of the telephone of every other person whom he may call, or who may call
him. As a means of espionage, writs of assistance and general warrants
are but puny instruments of tyranny and oppression when compared with
wire tapping.
This report contains many links on wiretapping.
Source: Electronic Privacy Information Center
Let’s pull the plug on the SEC’s automated Web snooping scheme
A plan by the Securities and Exchange Commission to scan
the Internet for "suspicious" words and phrases — and maintain a secret
database of the results — is an electronic "stop-and-frisk" that will
treat innocent Americans like financial felons, the Libertarian Party
warned today.
Libertarian Party, Press Release, March 30, 2000
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