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You are a suspect
Christ, when was the last time I agreed politically with William Safire?
“If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you:
Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend — all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as “a virtual, centralized grand database.”
Posted by timswan at November 24, 2002 10:09 PM
As someone who has worked for the government and now for a vendor contracted by the government (coincidentally, working on a large database program), I have good news and bad news:
The good: There will be a stupefying amount of information generated by this effort, and the government is pretty damn incompetent at managing large amounts of information. Their ability to trace the behavior of a large number individuals will be limited, at best.
The bad: There will be a stupefying amount of information generated by this effort, and the government is pretty damn incompetent at managing amounts of information. Their ability to delineate the behavior of a large number individuals -- i.e., separating the innocent from Evil Doers -- will be limited, at best.
Happy Thanksgiving!