Monday, June 16 2003.

Subject: "Snooping by any other name.."

Hi Paul (Mr. McNamara),

I commend you for your comments regarding the Pentagon's Total Information
Awareness data-mining program in your article "Snooping by any other name.."
a few weeks back.

For me that whole program smacks of Orwellian McCarthyism all over again
and conjures up the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition that hauled even
suspected "noted" saints of the day, such as Santa Teresa d'Avila (Saint
Theresa of Avila), before the Court of the Inquistion.

It seemed that almost eveybody became suspect of one thing or other
by the "Holy" Inquisition: in the end, it proved to be a WASTE of time and
resources.

Can the the U.S. afford to be in Iraq and elsewhere in the world turning up
stones looking for the "bad" guys and running such a diabolical machine
in its own backyard? It may make for a good Hollywoodian farce, but it will
surely not help to buoy the U.S. dollar/economy.

The U.S. Government too often comes across like a controversial Times
magazine article that CAN BE READ EITHER WAY: it canNOT SUPPORT
OPPRESSION/REPRESSION on the one hand and TALK about FREEDOM
on the other. The French would say the U.S.A. is NOT being COHERENT.

I strongly feel that "SMART SECURITY" need NOT be "OBSESSIVE", NEITHER
need it be "PERVASIVE", but rather "attentive" and "thoughtful".

I suspect a "BLOATED" SECURITY APPARATUS envisioned by this Total
Information Awareness project will surely prove to be "INEFFECTIVE" and
lead to TOO MANY "FALSE POSITIVES" engendering even greater frustration
in the public and formenting the belief that they canNOT TRUST their
Government to PROTECT THEIR FREEDOMS not to mention possible
litigation cases brought against the Government for defamation of
reputation.

I fear this project will encourage "TOO MUCH" POLICING that will have the
"REPRESSIVE" effect of creating a made-in-U.S.A POLICE-STATE-MIND-SET:
in which case it will NO LONGER be said that the U.S.A is "the" LAND OF
THE FREE.

I say: LET FREEDOM REIGN; let the U.S.A. remain THE LAND OF THE FREE:
let's keep this project where it belongs -- on the backburner.

God bless America.

Thanks for bringing up the topic for discussion.

Best wishes, 

.

Ken
~~~
President/Party Leader 
of the Égalité Party of Canada
Let's DEcriminalize Government! :-D
http://www.eh-ok.ca