Friday, December 23, 2005
Arkin: EVERYone is being wiretapped
Arkin says it's a guess.
But he's in the business of making guesses after he already basically knows.
He focuses on a section 126 of the reauthorization of the Patriot Act
Data-mining is defined in Section 126 as: "a query or search or other analysis of one or more electronic databases, where-- (A) at least one of the databases was obtained from or remains under the control of a non-Federal entity, or the information was acquired initially by another department or agency of the Federal Government for purposes other than intelligence or law enforcement; (B) the search does not use personal identifiers of a specific individual or does not utilize inputs that appear on their face to identify or be associated with a specified individual to acquire information; and (C) a department or agency of the Federal Government is conducting the query or search or other analysis to find a pattern indicating terrorist or other criminal activity.In English? Congress is seeking assurances that "the privacy and due process rights of individuals" is protected in the course of the government using massive databases of non-publicly available data; both proprietary databases and its own compiled intelligence and law enforcement databases to "search" for terrorists and terrorist connections. My comment on his blog: And your privacy is assured because the same people who think that a search that does "not use personal identifiers of a specific individual or does not utilize inputs that appear on their face to identify or be associated with a specified individual" preserves your privacy are the same people who think that "Joe Wilson's wife" does not identify Valerie Plame. Let's face it. When Neil Bush runs the S&L, your money is not safe.
More blogs about politics.
