Glenn Greenwald takes a small mention in an ABC report about VA Tech "Some news accounts have suggested that Cho had a history of antidepressant use, but senior federal officials tell ABC News that they can find no record of such medication in the government's files." and asks: "Is there any good reason whatsoever why the federal government should be maintaining 'files' which contain information about the pharmaceutical products which all Americans are consuming?"
"The federal government data base which contains all of our controlled substance prescriptions, for instance, was mandated by a law -- The National All Schedules Prescription Electronic Reporting Act -- passed in 2005 by the Republican-controlled Congress (though with full bipartisan support) and signed into law by the "conservative" Leader. That law appropriates funds to each state to create and maintain these data bases which are, apparently, accessible to federal agencies, federal law enforcement officials, and almost certainly thousands of other state and federal employees (as well as, most likely, employees of private companies)."
He then goes on to talk about the REAL ID Act which is really a national ID card and starts to connect some dots. I whole-heartedly agree but my complaint about most of these articles is that they never point out the real risks except in vague terms: "It is hardly worth pointing out that the idea of the Federal Government engaging in massive surveillance of innocent American citizens is about as far away from the core beliefs of the American Founders as one can get. Anyone who does not realize that is likely beyond the realm of persuasion."
To be equally vague but at least to put it into movie terms, see The Lives of Others, I really liked it. Yeah there are sub-titles, get over it.
These data collection systems don't work. They don't prevent crimes. The No-Fly list it turns out is a bunch of no-fly lists and at one point had 119,000 people on it. The problem is it has names on it not people and names aren't exactly unique or even accurate. There have been false names on it (like John Smith and Ted Kennedy) because criminals lie! And the officals know the names are wrong but since they are known aliases they stay on the list. They just make it harder for some completely innocent people to travel.
The other problem is that first-time criminals aren't criminals until they've actually committed a crime. Now we're hearing a lot about Cho Seung-Hui and the warning signs that people saw, but until monday he hadn't done anything wrong. Do you really want the government (federal, state or local) to "detain" people on what they might do? Who gets to predict the future? Who gets to interrogate them about what they were planning? Under what rules or oversight? Is putting them in a prison without a lawyer and waterboarding them ok? Such a question is usually asked with a addendum of "if it will prevent another 9/11", but the right addendum is "even if it doesn't prevent another 9/11".
Now "National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has circulated a draft bill that would expand the government's powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, liberalizing how that law can be used." Basically it's all stuff to let our spy agencies spy on us without judicial oversight, that is without warrants. Digby puts it well:
"There is no reason that the government needs anything more than the already existing secret court to issue secret warrants that are good for 120 days. If they can't "protect us" with that kind of power then they are either incompetent or they are doing something so wrong that even a kangaroo court won't sign off on it. Loosening those rules is absurd on its face."
Everyone has embarrassing things they'd rather not let others know about. If keeping track of all this info doesn't actually make us safer then it's just an enabler for corrupt people intimidate us. Robert Bork's unremarkable video rental history was published during his failed confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court and congress passed the Video Privacy Protection Act probably out of fear that their rental records would leak out. There's obviously nothing illegal about whatever anyone rented but it's also obviously something people would prefer to be private. We had these federal protections for years before we had any similar protections on even more private things like health care records.
And I really think the new laws protecting health care records just add more paperwork and make it harder for doctors to do their jobs. You now routinely have to sign a form that you probably don't read that lets the doctor and all involved read the records. Of course you will because if you don't they can't do their job. But how many people at insurance companies read the records and why don't you sign to let them access them? I've also heard from a doctor friend that his review board seemed confused and thought making a paper list of anonymous patient records to be used in a research study is a privacy violation but having that same list in electronic form in an email account isn't.
Big centralized databases of personal information don't prevent crimes. They just make it easier for someone to use something against you. And by "you" that might be you or it might be a Martin Luther King or a John Lennon or Robert Bork or a Clarence Thomas or a Joe Wilson or a Mathew Dowd.
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