Monday, August 01, 2005

No Place to Hide

In the 1990s, the data industry mushroomed. Vast computer systems quietly gathered staggering amounts of personal information about virtually every American adult, mostly for business and marketing purposes. After the 9/11 attacks, national security officials reached out to data companies for help in finding potential terrorists. Now, there may be No Place to Hide.


Since the 9/11 terror attacks, Americans have heard a stream of reports about new, eye-popping security technologies - tools to rate every airline passenger as a terrorism risk, or to sift through personal data about adults across the country and beyond. How far should the nation go in using your personal information for crime fighting and national security? In this new world, what are the rules?

There's wide agreement that after 9/11, the government needed to do a better job of identifying threats on American soil through the use of information technology. But since these technologies, in effect, monitor almost everyone, some people worry about the potential for new abuses.
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The book is unevenly written, but the website and audio are fascinating.

The book is ironic and shocking. A subsidiary of ChoicePoint helped the republican party suppress the black vote in Florida in the 2000 election. Not only do they steal your identity, they steal your vote.

http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/noplacetohide/index.html

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con·cept: No Place to Hide