Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution)
The Pentagon is constructing a computer system that could create a vast electronic dragnet, searching for personal information as part of the hunt for terrorists around the globe — including the United States.
As the director of the effort, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, has described the system in Pentagon documents and in speeches, it will provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access to information from Internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents, without a search warrant.
Historically, military and intelligence agencies have not been permitted to spy on Americans without extraordinary legal authorization. But Admiral Poindexter, the former national security adviser in the Reagan administration, has argued that the government needs broad new powers to process, store and mine billions of minute details of electronic life in the United States.
Admiral Poindexter, who has described the plan in public documents and speeches but declined to be interviewed, has said that the government needs to "break down the stovepipes" that separate commercial and government databases, allowing teams of intelligence agency analysts to hunt for hidden patterns of activity with powerful computers.
If you have any interest in this topic at all you really should read the whole story. Last month the AP did a story on this entitled "This is one real life Truman Show."
Poindexter, it should be noted, was a participant in the activities that lead to the Iran Contra scandal. hereinreality.com has an interesting page on him.
The technological specifics of surveillance are constantly changing but for good overviews of the philosophical and political issues involved you should read David Lyon's The Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society (University of Minnesote Press, 1994) and Reg Whitaker's The End of Privacy: How Total Surveillance Is Becoming a Reality (The New Press, 1999).
I'm not sure what to think of the fact that during college I probably spent more time listening to music and reading books such as these that I had checked out from the library than I did reading assigned texts and doing other homework. posted by micah holmquist at 11/10/2002 06:48:00 PM
