The Spies Who Shag Us -- The Times and USA Today have missed the bigger story -

[Guest guest]

Fri, 12 May 2006 15:14:26 -0400 (EDT)

" Greg Palast " <palast

The Spies Who Shag Us -- The Times and USA Today have missed

the bigger story - again.

 

 

 

THE SPIES WHO SHAG US

The Times and USA Today have Missed the Bigger Story -- Again

by Greg Palast

 

For Buzzflash

Friday, May 12, 2006

 

I know you're shocked -- SHOCKED! -- that George Bush is listening in

on all your phone calls. Without a warrant. That's nothing. And it's

not news.

 

This is: the snooping into your phone bill is just the snout of the

pig of a strange, lucrative link-up between the Administration's Homeland

Security spy network and private companies operating beyond the reach

of the laws meant to protect us from our government. You can call it

the privatization of the FBI -- though it is better described as the

creation of a private KGB.

 

********************

For the full story, see " Double Cheese With Fear, " in Armed Madhouse:

Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf and Other Dispatches from the Front Lines of

the Class War. "

********************

 

The leader in the field of what is called " data mining, " is a company,

formed in 1997, called, " ChoicePoint, Inc, " which has sucked up over a

billion dollars in national security contracts.

 

Worried about Dick Cheney listening in Sunday on your call to Mom?

That ain't nothing. You should be more concerned that they are linking

this info to your medical records, your bill purchases and your entire

personal profile including, not incidentally, your voting registration.

Five years ago, I discovered that ChoicePoint had already gathered 16

billion data files on Americans -- and I know they've expanded their ops

at an explosive rate.

 

They are paid to keep an eye on you -- because the FBI can't. For the

government to collect this stuff is against the law unless you're

suspected of a crime. (The law in question is the Constitution.) But

ChoicePoint can collect if for " commercial " purchases -- and under the

Bush

Administration's suspect reading of the Patriot Act -- our domestic

spying apparatchiks can then BUY the info from ChoicePoint.

 

Who ARE these guys selling George Bush a piece of you?

 

ChoicePoint's board has more Republicans than a Palm Beach country

club. It was funded, and its board stocked, by such Republican sugar

daddies as billionaires Bernie Marcus and Ken Langone -- even after

Langone

was charged by the Securities Exchange Commission with abuse of inside

information.

 

I first ran across these guys in 2000 in Florida when our Guardian/BBC

team discovered the list of 94,000 " felons " that Katherine Harris had

ordered removed from Florida's voter rolls before the election.

Virtually every voter purged was innocent of any crime except, in most

cases,

Voting While Black. Who came up with this electoral hit list that gave

Bush the White House? ChoicePoint, Inc.

 

And worse, they KNEW the racially-tainted list of felons was bogus.

And when we caught them, they lied about it. While they've since

apologized to the NAACP, ChoicePoint's ethnic cleansing of voter rolls

has

been amply assuaged by the man the company elected.

 

And now ChoicePoint and George Bush want your blood. Forget your phone

bill. ChoicePoint, a sickened executive of the company told us in

confidence, " hope to build a database of DNA samples from every person

in the United States ...linked to all the other information held by CP

[ChoicePoint] " from medical to voting records.

And ChoicePoint lied about that too. The company publicly denied they

gave DNA to the Feds -- but then told our investigator, pretending to

seek work, that ChoicePoint was " the number one " provider of DNA info to

the FBI.

" And that scares the hell out of me, " said the executive (who has since

left the company), because ChoicePoint gets it WRONG so often. We are

not contracting out our Homeland Security to James Bond here. It's

more like Austin Powers, Inc. Besides the 97% error rate in finding

Florida " felons, " Illinois State Police fired the company after

discovering

ChoicePoint had produced test " results " on rape case evidence ... that

didn't exist. And ChoicePoint just got hit with the largest fine in

Federal Trade Commission history for letting identity thieves purchase

145,000 credit card records.

But it won't stop, despite Republican senators shedding big crocodile

tears about " surveillance " of innocent Americans. That's because FEAR

is a lucrative business -- not just for ChoicePoint, but for firms such

as Syntech, Sybase and Lockheed-Martin -- each of which has provided

lucrative posts or profits to connected Republicans including former

Total Information Awareness chief John Poindexter (Syntech), Marvin Bush

(Sybase) and Lynn Cheney (Lockheed-Martin).

But how can they get Americans to give up our personal files, our phone

logs, our DNA and our rights? Easy. Fear sells better than sex -- and

they want you to be afraid. Back to today's New York Times, page 28:

" Wider Use of DNA Lists is Urged in Fighting Crime. " And who is

providing the technology? It comes, says the Times, from the work

done on

using DNA fragments to identity victims of the September 11 attack. And

who did that job (for $12 million, no bid)? ChoicePoint, Inc. Which

is NOT mentioned by the Times.

" Genetic surveillance would thus shift from the individual [the alleged

criminal] to the family, " says the Times -- which will require, of

course, a national DNA database of NON-criminals.

It doesn't end there. Turn to the same newspaper, page 23, with a

story about a weird new law passed by the state of Georgia to fight

illegal

immigration. Every single employer and government agency will be

required to match citizen or worker data against national databases to

affirm citizenship. It won't stop illegal border crossing, but hey,

someone's going to make big bucks on selling data. And guess what

local boy

owns the data mine? ChoicePoint, Inc., of Alpharetta, Georgia.

The knuckleheads at the Times don't put the three stories together

because the real players aren't in the press releases their reporters

re-write.

But that's the Fear Industry for you. You aren't safer from terrorists

or criminals or " felon " voters. But the national wallet is several

billion dollars lighter and the Bill of Rights is a couple amendments

shorter.

And that's their program. They get the data mine -- and we get the

shaft.

**********

Greg Palast is author of Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?,

China Floats Bush Sinks, The Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind

Left and Other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War, out June

6. You can order it now.

For more horror and humor from the War on Terror, listen to an excerpt

from Chapter 1 of Armed Madhouse, " Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?

********************

=======================