I thanked Cafferty and asked him to cover the heavy object that almost hit Spectre and Supreme Court Justice O’Conner, and how the media coverage of this was redacted. Read about it on EZ Board Rigorous Intuition.

And Ruth Ginsberg’s statements about the Repub leadership encouraging violence againsts judges.

Appreciate the infor on FDL about Comstock and her connections with the fiend Mel Sembler. America has had torture concentration camps on the Mainland against teenagers for quite some time paid for with our tax dollars courtesy of Jeb bush and the other bushlings.

Connect existing government and commercial databases.
Let’s start by connecting most of the large government databases that contain information on domestic activity, including those containing customs, immigration, law enforcement, military and Internal Revenue Service files. The network would eventually include state and local tax rolls, political contribution lists, and educational and voting records.

In the short term, the government would build software that translates queries between the various databases (since its current information systems are the digital version of the Tower of Babel). A permanent solution would be to create rigid requirements forcing all agencies and contractors to converge around a common set of standards for data storage and access.

Contractors would eventually write translation gateways into many commercial databases so that searches against the government database could be seamlessly integrated. Some of these commercial databases would be straightforward, containing data such as credit reports, phone and other utility bills, and transportation/reservation information from airlines, rental car companies and hotels. Others might be more subjective and involve human appraisals such as profiled direct-marketing lists, school guidance counselor records and comments made by utility or government workers.

Match them to commercial information such as credit reports (using social security numbers).
Initially, translation systems would be “data-matched” against government records. The government would eventually mandate that all commercial databases include a field for social security numbers. This would likely result in legislation making it a crime for consumers to give false social security numbers to companies. It might even require these companies to deny service to the curmudgeons who still refused to provide that information.

This system would eventually access tens of millions of real-time sensors for up-to-the-minute threat assessment.
Add tens of millions of cameras and other sensors.
This system would eventually access tens of millions of real-time sensors for up-to-the-minute threat assessment. This process of adding sensors is already underway at several different agencies. These sensors include visual cameras at various public places, such as storefronts, street corners, highways, toll roads and airports. Some already rely on experimental face-recognition software. Other sensors would include identification devices at checkpoints in public buildings and eventually in all transportation terminals.

Require national ID cards and tie them to a biometric database.
These devices would require some sort of universal identification card that carries biometric information. The biometrics could include fingerprints, retinal scans, face measurements, blood types and DNA. (The military is already collecting DNA information to facilitate body identification.) Of course, this would require a national ID card and, even more importantly, a universal database of biometric information; otherwise it would be useless. The easiest way to build up this database is to collect the information from schoolchildren. An alternative method would be to link the biometric collection to draft registration for citizens and to visa issuance for resident aliens.

Track phone calls and e-mail, and generate diagrams of social groupings using traffic analysis.
An important element of a predictive system would be the gathering of information on social interactions and on “networks” of individuals who communicate as a group. Intelligence analysts refer to this process as “traffic analysis.” Expansion of the Carnivore/DCS-1000 program to encompass most Internet-based communications, used together with records of phone transactions, should provide enough information.

Naturally, detailed analysis will also require the content of the conversations. Since the system will have to reconstruct activity after the fact, this implies that all communication from all Internet users will have to be stored.

Build technology that will “guess” what people are thinking and predict what they might do.
Since terrorism is ideologically based, anyone is a potential terrorist. Under this proposed system, then, everyone’s actions would have to be under constant scrutiny. But the biggest problem with large-scale information systems is figuring out what’s important in the data that’s being stored.

Since terrorism is ideologically based, anyone is a potential terrorist.
Since this is a threat-assessment system, it would deploy a so-called heuristic processing, or rules-based analysis, similar to what’s used by credit scoring systems to determine consumer creditworthiness. But the terrorist-profiling system would have much more sophisticated and insightful rules, crafted by psychologists, and would have much more data to work with. It would look for ideological leanings, as demonstrated by choice of reading material, organization memberships and friends, or psychological disturbances, as evidenced by behavioral changes such as a sudden switch in grocery-buying habits.

Researchers would be free to experiment with many types of correlations of individual behavior–such as dietary habits, travel behavior and social grouping–to determine the best way to assess the threat-potential of everyone, Americans and aliens alike.

Give everyone a secret threat score or loyalty rating.
Since millions of government workers need access to these threat profiles–and most will not be trained in the nuances of interpreting psychological information–threat scores similar to credit scores are the most useful way to display the results of these profiles. In this way, any government employee with access to the system could look up a person’s threat score based on their social security number, driver’s license or immigration visa number.

In the screensaver, looking out at the fish…
People may get used to the cameras, but threat profiling will cause them to make lifestyle adjustments. We’ve become accustomed to the idea that our credit report can affect our chances of getting a job, renting an apartment or buying a car. The threat score would serve the same function in all of our interactions with government employees.

As this Predictive Data Security System threat profiling develops, people will quickly find out what kind of behavior will draw attention and what’s safe. They might avoid certain books and take extra-special care to find out the background and opinions of their friends, colleagues and employees.

If a person unfortunately gets a high threat score–perhaps because of something that one of their friends or family said–they might reduce that score through some socially useful action such as providing information on one of their neighbors. This is your Totalitarian Information Agency – Do you want to know more.
We’re from the government and we’re here to love you.

Would anyone care to join me in bringing our phone bills over to Rep. Pelosi’s office here in SF?

It’s the least we can do to preserve the Republic in wartime.

I’ve got some old phone bills lying about here – and more come every month. If you’d like to join me in taking your old phone records to Rep. Pelosi’s office, please feel free to give a holler.

I mean, we give her a lot of flack, but – hey – she’s been getting the NSA briefings.

What do San Franciscans know about the Constitution? Our Rep. must know better – and she sure isn’t signing on to the amicus briefs opposing the NSA illegal spying.

I’ve never been one to place blind trust in anyone – but where has that taken me? Time to turn over a new leaf and place my full faith and confidence in my Congressperson. If the Dems chose her as their leader, who I am to object?

So, if Rep. Pelosi thinks the government should have my old phone records, well gosh golly as a loyal American how can I say no?

If the government needs to break so many laws just to see my old phone records – those records must be vital to national security.

Now I’m not planning any trips to Maryland, so I can’t just drop off at the NSA.

I’m afraid to mail the records. What if these treaures of national security were lost in the mail? Or what if the wrong sort of spook opened my mail to the NSA and saw the secrets? Horrors!

How can I know for certain which spy is reading what agency’s mail? Does the FBI watch the CIA? Who watches the DIA? Who snoops on the NSA for the DOD?

It’s all too much for this simple citizen. I’ll take my old phone bills down to my Congressperson – she’ll know what to do with my private records.

She knows what to do you with your private records, too: let the NSA take them.

So if you want to help our wise Congressperson serve the NSA, lets gett together and visit Rep. Pelosi’s office.

You do want to help, right? After all, we’re at war.

And the EFF, which sued AT&T in January. The USAToday article only briefly mentioned the EFF. I think the EFF’s work should be highlighted.

The EFF has been fighting for years against the government’s wanting to know *everyone you communicate with*– for example, the gov’t wanting to track every email communication, or the gov’t wanting to ban strong encryption in software. i.e. the gov’t wanting to ban electronic envelopes for your electronic letters.

The EFF has also fought against corporations who illegally want to unmask anonymous or pseudonymous writers. The EFF’s position is that corporations have to prove that someone’s writing is illegal before the corporation can find out who the writer was.

Because I know EFF people personally, I know how the work they do seems like its from a much larger organization. But they’re not that large except in their accomplishments, and they need donations. If you like their work, including all their work which has protected blogging, consider donating.

She was one of the Dems who voted for the gawdawful bankruptcy bill.

Darlene Hooley has got to go.

well, rawstory gets it right more often than the note– just sayin.

roflmao!!