[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 148 (Friday, November 15, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2066-E2067]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ``YOU ARE A SUSPECT''

                                 ______
                                 

                             HON. RON PAUL

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, November 14, 2002

  Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to read ``You are a 
Suspect'' by William Safire in today's New York Times. Mr. Safire, who 
has been one of the media's most consistent defenders of personal 
privacy, details the Defense Department's plan to establish a system of 
``Total Information Awareness.'' According to Mr. Safire, once this 
system is implemented, no American will be able to use the internet to 
fill a prescription, subscribe to a magazine, buy a book, send or 
receive e-mail, or visit a web site free from the prying eyes of 
government bureaucrats. Furthermore, individual internet transactions 
will be recorded in ``a virtual centralized grand database.'' 
Implementation of this project would shred the Fourth Amendment's 
requirement that the government establish probable cause and obtain a 
search warrant before snooping into the private affairs of its 
citizens. I hope my colleagues read Mr. Safire's article and support 
efforts to prevent the implementation of this program, including 
repealing any legislation weakening privacy protections that

[[Page E2067]]

Congress may inadvertently have passed in the rush to complete 
legislative business this year.

               [lsqb]New York Times, Nov. 14, 2002[rsqb]

                           You Are a Suspect

                          (By William Safire)

       Washington--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.''
       To this computerized dossier on your private life from 
     commercial sources, add every piece of information that 
     government has about you--passport application, driver's 
     license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce 
     records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your 
     lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera 
     surveillance--and you have the supersnoop's dream: a ``Total 
     Information Awareness'' about every U.S. citizen.
       This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario. It is what 
     will happen to your personal freedom in the next few weeks if 
     John Poindexter gets the unprecedented power he seeks.
       Remember Poindexter? Brilliant man, first in his class at 
     the Naval Academy, later earned a doctorate in physics, rose 
     to national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan. 
     He had this brilliant idea of secretly selling missiles to 
     Iran to pay ransom for hostages, and with the illicit 
     proceeds to illegally support contras in Nicaragua.
       A jury convicted Poindexter in 1990 on five felony counts 
     of misleading Congress and making false statements, but an 
     appeals court overturned the verdict because Congress had 
     given him immunity for his testimony. He famously asserted, 
     ``The buck stops here,'' arguing that the White House staff, 
     and not the president, was responsible for fateful decisions 
     that might prove embarrassing.
       This ring-knocking master of deceit is back again with a 
     plan even more scandalous than Iran-contra. He heads the 
     ``Information Awareness Office'' in the otherwise excellent 
     Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which spawned the 
     Internet and stealth aircraft technology. Poindexter is now 
     realizing his 20-year dream: getting the ``data-mining'' 
     power to snoop on every public and private act of every 
     American.
       Even the hastily passed U.S.A. Patriot Act, which widened 
     the scope of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and 
     weakened 15 privacy laws, raised requirements for the 
     government to report secret eavesdropping to Congress and the 
     courts. But Poindexter's assault on individual privacy rides 
     roughshod over such oversight.
       He is determined to break down the wall between commercial 
     snooping and secret government intrusion. The disgraced 
     admiral dismisses such necessary differentiation as 
     bureaucratic ``stovepiping.'' And he has been given a $200 
     million budget to create computer dossiers on 300 million 
     Americans.
       When George W. Bush was running for president, he stood 
     foursquare in defense of each person's medical, financial and 
     communications privacy. But Poindexter, whose contempt for 
     the restraints of oversight drew the Reagan administration 
     into its most serious blunder, is still operating on the 
     presumption that on such a sweeping theft of privacy rights, 
     the buck ends with him and not with the president.
       This time, however, he has been seizing power in the open. 
     In the past week John Markoff of The Times, followed by 
     Robert O'Harrow of The Washington Post have revealed the 
     extent of Poindexter's operation, but editorialists have not 
     grasped its undermining of the Freedom of Information Act.
       Political awareness can overcome ``Total Information 
     Awareness,'' the combined force of commercial and government 
     snooping. In a similar overreach, Attorney General Ashcroft 
     tried his Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS), 
     but public outrage at the use of gossips and postal workers 
     as snoops caused the House to shoot it down. The Senate 
     should now do the same to this other exploitation of fear.
       The Latin motto over Poindexter's new Pentagon office reads 
     ``Scientia Est Potentia'' ``knowledge is power.`` Exactly: 
     the government's infinite knowledge about you is its power 
     over you. ``We're just as concerned as the next person with 
     protecting privacy,'' this brilliant mind blandly assured The 
     Post. A jury found he spoke falsely before.

     

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