A separate page has the material
about domestic spying connected to
the War. This page is about issues that are troublesome whether or not there's a war going on.
FBI compiling big database of
physical traits. The FBI has embarked on a $1 billion effort to build the world's largest
computer database of peoples' physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented
abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad. Digital images of faces,
fingerprints and palm patterns already are flowing into FBI systems….
FBI Spearheads
Biometric Program with Other Nations. The FBI is spearheading the creation of a biometrics program, called
'Server in the Sky,' with international partners using biometric information — such as irises and palm
prints — to create a worldwide database of criminals and terrorists.
[...and everybody else, while they're at it.]
Total Informational Awareness.
A project of the United States Department of Defense, Total Informational Awareness (TIA) is designed to gather
personal data on a grand scale, including emails, phone calls, financial records, transportation habits, and
medical information. Its proponents believe that by scanning and analyzing this massive pile of data,
government agents will be able to predict and prevent crime.
[If that is true, they would also be able to detect and prevent any opposition to Big Brother.]
Update:
Homeland Security revives supersnoop.
Homeland Security officials are testing a supersnoop computer system that sifts through personal information on
U.S. citizens to detect possible terrorist attacks, prompting concerns from lawmakers who have called for
investigations. The system uses the same data-mining process that was developed by the Pentagon's Total
Information Awareness (TIA) project that was banned by Congress in 2003 because of vast privacy violations.
Safer homes, safer neighborhoods.
Police Chief Cathy Lanier wants to help parents and others who fear their own children or other family members might have a
gun in the home. As part of her Safe Homes initiative, the chief announced that officers would be going door-to-door
asking residents for permission to search their home and seize illegal property (guns, drugs, etc.) No warrants.
Just knock, ask, agree and the latex gloves begin searching.
The Editor says...
The usual shills will argue, "If you have nothing to hide, why would you object?"
Sounding the Alarm on Government-Mandated Data
Retention: By waving the red flag of fighting child pornography, seemingly intelligent and
usually well-meaning legislators appear ready to create the mother of all big-brother database laws, a
treasure trove of personal data that will ultimately be available for every fishing expedition under
the sun.
Additional information about Data Retention is
on this page.
And if you're worried about leaky interactive databases,
read this.
'Big
Brother' is the boss. When the Town of Babylon (New York) installed global positioning system
technology in most of its fleet of 250 vehicles in January, officials touted it as a way to improve
efficiency, particularly during emergencies such as snowstorms. However, the system also is being used
to monitor worker behavior — a realization that has left town employees increasingly nervous.
Living Under Surveillance: Telecom giant AT&T has
allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to set up what could only be called a "spy room" on AT&T property to make
routine monitoring of phone calls easier. … Face-recognition software was successfully tested during Super
Bowl XXXV in Tampa, Florida, with approximately 100,000 faces being scanned and identified. … The FBI, apparently
unsatisfied with their success using data mining, is issuing so many National Security Letters (NSLs) —
administrative subpoenas that require no probable cause while simultaneously precluding the recipient from ever
disclosing that the letter was issued — that they plan to automate the process of tracking them.
Protecting
Yourself From Suspicionless Searches While Traveling: Only a judge can force you to answer
questions, and then only if the Fifth Amendment does not apply. While no Fifth Amendment right protects
the data on your laptop or phone, one federal court has held that even a judge cannot force you to divulge your
password when the act of revealing the password shows that you are the person with access to or control over
potentially incriminating files. See In re Boucher, 2007 WL 4246473 (D. Vt. November 29, 2007).
'Snooper's charter' to check texts
and emails. Local councils, health authorities and hundreds of other public bodies are to be
given the power to access details of everyone's personal text, emails and internet use under Home Office
proposals published yesterday [8/12/2008]. Ministers want to make it mandatory for telephone and
internet companies to keep details of all personal internet traffic for at least 12 months so it can be
accessed for investigations into crime or other threats to public safety.
NYC mayor: Get used to
surveillance. Residents of big cities like New York and London must accept that they are under
constant watch by video cameras, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday [10/1/2007]. Bloomberg,
holding talks with his London counterpart Ken Livingstone, said such measures as London's "ring of
steel" — a network of closed-circuit cameras that monitors the city center — were a
necessary protection in a dangerous world.
D.C.
police set to monitor 5,000 cameras. D.C. officials are giving police access to more than 5,000
closed-circuit TV cameras citywide that monitor traffic, schools and public housing — a move that
will give the District one of the largest surveillance networks in the country.
Who's Listening In on You? Simply put, monitoring every
phone call, every e-mail message, and every instant message flowing through America will not result in a reasonable reduction
of the risk of terrorist attacks. Unless there are a lot more terrorists in the United States than even the most
pessimistic estimates would suggest, increased monitoring will result in little else but loss of privacy and increased expense.
(It would also result in a veritable cornucopia of business for security firms and technology providers, all paid for with
taxpayer money.)
U.S. to Expand Domestic
Use Of Spy Satellites. The U.S.'s top intelligence official has greatly expanded the range of
federal and local authorities who can get access to information from the nation's vast network of spy
satellites in the U.S. The decision, made three months ago by Director of National Intelligence Michael
McConnell, places for the first time some of the U.S.'s most powerful intelligence-gathering tools at the
disposal of domestic security officials.
Federal, local police bypass subpoenas, get
phone data from brokers. Those using data brokers include agencies of the Homeland Security and
Justice departments — including the FBI and U.S. Marshal's Service — and municipal police
departments in California, Florida, Georgia and Utah. Experts believe hundreds of other departments
frequently use such services.
We must learn from other countries' experiences.
England had the great idea to put up surveillance cameras almost everywhere (just like
in 1984) as a sure
way to eliminate crime. There's still just as much crime, but now the cops have
pictures of it. Unfortunately they also have pictures of everyday people minding their own
business.
This nonsense can happen here, too, if we let it.
Britain will be
first country to monitor every car journey. Britain is to become the first
country in the world where the movements of all vehicles on the roads are recorded. A
new national surveillance system will hold the records for at least two years. Using a
network of cameras that can automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to
build a huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security services can analyse
any journey a driver has made over several years.
Britain risks becoming 'Orwellian society'.
An increase in closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras risks turning Britain into an Orwellian society, a senior
police officer said in an interview broadcast today.
It's all just a façade.
Tens
of thousands of CCTV cameras, yet 80% of crime unsolved. London has 10,000 crime-fighting CCTV
cameras which cost £200 million, figures show today. But an analysis of the publicly funded spy
network, which is owned and controlled by local authorities and Transport for London, has cast doubt on its
ability to help solve crime. A comparison of the number of cameras in each London borough with the
proportion of crimes solved there found that police are no more likely to catch offenders in areas with
hundreds of cameras than in those with hardly any.
Britain's
multi-billion-pound CCTV network 'an utter fiasco which has failed to cut crime'. Britain's
network of CCTV cameras has been branded "an utter fiasco" for failing to cut crime, despite billions of pounds
being spent on it. Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville, who is in charge of closed-circuit television
for the Metropolitan Police Force, claimed only 3 percent of the capital's street robberies are solved
using security camera footage and criminals are not afraid of being caught on film.
80
percent of CCTV images 'ineffective'. Britain's surveillance society was exposed as ineffective
yesterday [10/19/2007] by a damning official report which revealed 80 percent of CCTV
footage is of poor quality and that the cameras are mostly used to trap motorists rather than
catch criminals. The Government and police chiefs want to extend the network which
monitors Britons — already the world's biggest with an estimated one camera for every
12 people — even further to cover all "public space".
Councils Told: Stop Spying
On The Public. Bosses have been warned by the head of the Local Government Association (LGA) that
they risk alienating the public for so-called snooping. They may also be stripped of the right to use
spying methods. But Sir Simon Milton defended councils that used surveillance to tackle fly tippers,
rogue traders and tax and benefit fraudsters. There has been growing anger about the methods used by
councils to probe minor crimes, such as dog fouling.
Electronic Visual Surveillance and the
Reasonable Expectation of Privacy: Public video surveillance has recently become one of the most
conspicuous manifestations of, and effective instruments in, the exercise of the state's police powers.
The development of surveillance technology, and its late convergence with state of the art computers, databases,
and telecommunication systems, has dramatically enhanced government's ability to perform its law enforcement
functions. But, it has equally increased the tension between the need of government to combat the daily
threats to public safety and the right of law-abiding citizens to be secure from the potential privacy abuses
of modern policing technology.
NJ Bill Would Prohibit Anonymous Posts on
Forums. Too much important opinion, including that leading to the founding of the country,
was published anonymously to permit the government to ban anonymous opinion. Even unto this day,
anonymous pamphleteering is an honorable activity at the core of the First Amendment. … I would
expect that such a statute, were it to be enacted, would be quickly challenged and almost as quickly
overturned.
TSA
Lied About Protecting Passenger Data. This is major stuff. It shows
that the TSA lied to the public about its use of personal data again and again and again.
IBM Becomes Speed Enforcer
in UAE. IBM will begin installing a "Smart Box" system in vehicles in the
United Arab Emirates next year, potentially generating millions in traffic fines for
the Gulf state.
Covert Video Cameras: Who's
Watching Me? The controversial news of the National Security Agency (NSA) conducting domestic
spying puts a spotlight on the issue of surveillance in general. Have you ever wondered, for instance in your
place of employment or at the local shopping mall, if you were being watched?
SFPD Officer Accused
of Using Airport Cameras to Ogle Women. A police officer is facing
possible disciplinary action for allegedly using surveillance cameras at San Francisco
International Airport to ogle women as they walked through the terminal, according to
San Francisco Police Commission documents.
Watching You: Systematic
Federal Surveillance of Ordinary Americans. To combat terrorism, Attorney
General John Ashcroft has asked Congress to "enhance" the government's ability to conduct
domestic surveillance of citizens. The Justice Department's legislative proposals
would give federal law enforcement agents new access to personal information contained in
business and school records. Before acting on those legislative proposals, lawmakers
should pause to consider the extent to which the lives of ordinary Americans already are
monitored by the federal government.
Schools Adjust to
Student-Tracking System. This month marks the first anniversary of a student tracking
system that has nabbed 155 individuals in its first year for various suspicious activities,
including using forged documents.
Warrants as a Security
Countermeasure. More and more, we are living in a society where we are all
tracked automatically all of the time. We can all be tracked by our cell
phones. E-ZPass tracks cars at tunnels and bridges. [In Dallas, they're
called Toll Tags.] Security cameras record us. Our purchases are tracked by
banks and credit card companies, our telephone calls by phone companies, our Internet
surfing habits by Web site operators. The Department of Justice claims that it needs
these, and other, search powers to combat terrorism.
Privacy from Government in a Transparent Society:
Individuals face a greater threat to their privacy from government than from the private sector. In
general, people have little or no control over what information is collected, how much is shared or how
securely it is stored. If a business refuses to keep private information about one's consumer preferences
secure, consumers can take their business elsewhere. But they hardly have the same opportunity when it
comes to the Department of Motor Vehicles or the IRS.
Is the IRS putting your private data at risk?
The Internal Revenue Service already takes your money. As if that weren't painful enough, it also seems
that the IRS doesn't adequately protect your private information, according to a recent report by the Treasury
Inspector General for Tax Administration. Curious? You should be.
Sweden
May Spy On E-Mails. Sweden's government presented a contentious plan Thursday [3/8/2007] to allow
a defense intelligence agency to monitor — without a court order — E-mail traffic and phone calls
crossing the nation's borders. The government insists only a fraction of the electronic communications
will be affected, but critics worry the program, designed to combat terrorism and other threats to national
security, is too far-reaching.
The Agency That Could
Be Big Brother. Thirty years ago, Senator Frank Church, the Idaho Democrat who was then chairman
of the select committee on intelligence, investigated the [NSA] and came away stunned. "That capability
at any time could be turned around on the American people," he said in 1975, "and no American would have any
privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't
matter. There would be no place to hide." He added that if a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A.
"could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back."
ACLU Calls New "Secure Flight"
Passenger Profiling System Invasive, Inadequate and Ineffective. In comments filed with the
Department of Homeland Security, the ACLU has offered deep criticism of the "Secure Flight" airline passenger
screening program. The ACLU said that many of the privacy and civil liberties concerns identified in the
Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS II) remain with its successor, Secure Flight.
License Plate "Guns"
and Privacy: New Haven police have a new law enforcement tool: a license-plate
scanner. Similar to a radar gun, it reads the license plates of moving or parked cars and links
with remote police databases, immediately providing information about the car and owner. Right
now the police check if there are any taxes owed on the car, if the car or license plate is
stolen, and if the car is unregistered or uninsured. A car that comes up positive is towed.
Olympic
Spy Zeppelin Flies Into Greek Flak. Greek activists say a 200-foot surveillance
zeppelin patrolling Olympic Athens tramples on civil rights and have launched legal action to
ground it. The blimp, dubbed Big Brother by local media, carries a battery
of hi-tech sensors from spy cameras to chemical agent detectors and is part of Greece's
$1.2 billion security plan.
DOJ Seeks the Power To Disable PC
Security. The U.S. Department of Justice is to request government authorization to use covert
methods to disable security measures on PCs prior to criminal investigations, according to Friday's Washington
Post. The legislation is reportedly entitled the "Cyberspace Electronic Security Act".
Minneapolis approves gunfire
sensors. The Minneapolis City Council approved a new system (called "Shot Spotter") that detects
the sound of gunfire in the city, allowing police to respond more quickly to possible crimes. … The
system's sensors are hidden in units the size of a coffee can, and criminals cannot detect
them. "They have no idea where the system is deployed," says [Shot Spotter CEO James] Beldock.
[Nonsense. The sensors will be in fixed locations, and anyone with eyes should be
able to find them all.]
The Patriot Act
reduces privacy and undercuts judicial review. The assumption has been
that there was simply too much liberty and privacy in America — and that federal
law-enforcement agencies did not have enough power. To remedy that perceived problem,
policymakers rushed the USA Patriot Act into law. The Patriot Act was designed to reduce privacy
and increase security. It has succeeded in at least reducing privacy. Financial privacy
is essentially gone. The feds have turned banks, brokerage houses, insurers and other
financial institutions into state informers.
Big Brother is Watching You. The issues involved
have little to do with privacy, although Americans like to think of their cars as their own private little
domain. The issues involved are constitutional in nature, and have to do more with fairness than privacy.
Watching
Your Every Move: Comprehensive government databases and new invasive technologies
threaten our system of checks and balances, presenting an unprecedented potential for tyranny.
The Loss of Privacy: The
advance of technology poses a new threat to privacy. Today vast amounts of information
once considered personal and private are collected, shared and cross-referenced in massive
databases without the knowledge or consent of those affected. Included in the list are
school records, financial records, buying habits information, and medical records.
Carnivore: The Government
Wants Your E-Mail. The FBI has assured congress that only communications covered
by warrants will be kept and any non-relevant material destroyed, but what else are they going
to say? Can you imagine a federal official testifying before congress that "well,
we think it's a neat way to find out who's misbehaving". These assurances of
honorable intent would be more comforting if they weren't coming from an agency that
happily trotted over hundreds of raw FBI files, many on political adversaries of the
Clinton's, to the White House.
Minnesota
Private Police Database Shut Down. Some saw it as the sort of tool that
could help police protect citizens, but others decried it as a Big Brother network
operating outside the bounds of state regulation.
Secret
U.S. court OKs electronic spying. In an unexpected and near-complete
victory for law enforcement, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review
overturned a lower court's decision and said that Attorney General John Ashcroft's
request for new powers was reasonable.
New
Technology: Security Precautions or Privacy Violations The
Pentagon's already developing a system that can track and library every car
and driver in a city, a complex matrix of cameras and computers constantly sifting
information about the traffic, looking for suspicious activity.
IRS Tightens Controls Over Tax ID Numbers: After
raising concerns about potential security risks, the Internal Revenue Service on Wednesday [12/17/2003]
tightened restrictions on identification numbers issued to taxpayers who are ineligible for Social Security
numbers.
Vanishing Liberties: Where's the
Press? On March 18 [2003], the Associated Press reported that at John Carroll University, in a
Cleveland suburb, Justice Antonin Scalia said that "most of the rights you enjoy go way beyond what the
Constitution requires" because "the Constitution just sets minimums." Accordingly, in wartime, Scalia
emphasized, "the protections will be ratcheted down to the constitutional minimum."
Complexities Of Federal
Data Mining: Whether or not the powers of the federal government to mine data make us safer from
terrorism is open to serious question. The government has yet to prove its efficacy in fighting terrorism.
How
Much Is Privacy Worth? The Supreme Court will hear arguments over
whether the government is automatically on the hook for illegally releasing private
data. The feds say individuals must prove harm before claiming compensation.
Plan
to snoop on fliers takes intrusion to new heights: The government now is
proposing to take screening to an unprecedented level of intrusiveness: rifling
through extensive commercial and government data on all air travelers without their
knowledge or permission and using the information to assign each flier
a security-risk ranking.
Privacy
Villain of the Week: North Central Texas Council of Governments. According
to a report in the Dallas Star-Telegram, members of the North Central Texas Council of
Governments are pushing a plan to record and archive the movements of motorists in the
Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex as viewed on 159 traffic cameras. The highly dubious
justification given for the move is a potential bioterrorist attack at a football stadium
that no one notices at the time. By recording everyone, the Council of Governments
can later decide what cities to quarantine.
ACLU
report says the US is heading toward a Big Brother society. The United
States is evolving into a Big Brother society as technology advances and
post-September 11 surveillance increases, the American Civil Liberties Union
said in a new report.
More
Surveillance on the Way: The USA Patriot Act opened loopholes that let
electronic communications service providers give customer records to law enforcement
officials without a warrant. In lay terms, the folks that provide your email
account are an electronic service provider, and your actual emails
could fall into the category of customer records.
Conservatives
Go on the Offense: The privacy issue was discussed in terms of making certain
that any information the government can gather on law-abiding citizens in the name of national
security is information you would not mind falling into the hands of Hillary Clinton should
she someday become president or attorney general.
Why
the Pentagon Wants to Spy on Your Shopping: Did you realize
the Pentagon will soon know about every gun, book, magazine, Twinkie, condom and
everything else you buy? The reason for the massive database: to seek "patterns
indicative of terrorist activity," defense officials said [recently].
Watching
You: Systematic Federal Surveillance of Ordinary Americans Federal
data collection empowers the United States government to obtain personal
information about every American citizen: the checks he writes, the types of
causes he supports, what he says "privately" to his doctor. The result — and
often the purpose — is a profound erosion of individual autonomy.
Feds
Share College Students' Info: Student aid applicants, check the fine
print. That information you put on your application to the U.S. Department of Education
is being shared with the Pentagon, the Justice Department and other agencies, even
private companies like debt collectors.
The
Number of the Beast: Worldwide systems of pervasive surveillance
might make it easier for the spies and for law enforcement, but is that a
sufficient excuse for the establishment of a secret police? As long as the
existence and purpose of these systems are denied by my government and held
secret from me in the name of some bogus national security, then they are
wrong, and I object. A system like
Carnivore or
Echelon, well known to any
conceivable enemy of the state but kept hidden only from everyday citizens and
operated outside of the purview of due process, has no business in a free
society. Yet somehow these defenders of our liberty expect us to
lie down and accept their lies and their invasion into our daily
lives. That's what they are counting on.
Big
Brother is watching you read: Increasingly, the
government is demanding that bookstores reveal
what books their customers have purchased. Bookstore owners and
privacy advocates say that's scarier than a Stephen King novel.
Big
Brother Wants to Watch You Even More. Your
phone bill records, your bank account, your medical records. All will be
exposed to more prying eyes if federal and (increasingly) international
snoopers get their way.
Big Brother is On-line: Public and
Private Security in the Internet
Security
trumps privacy: In the name of thwarting terrorism, Americans
are more accepting than ever of technology that tracks their every move.
Liberty
and Privacy: Connections. If property is liberty's other half, privacy
is its guardian. The right to privacy is essential to the preservation of freedom for
the simplest of reasons. If no one knows what I do, when I do it,
and with whom I do it, no one can possibly interfere with it. Intuitively,
we understand this, as witness our drawing the curtains and pulling the
window shades down when prowlers are about. The threat to freedom comes
from both the criminal and the state, from any and all ways and means
in which others forcibly overcome our will. Just as we do not want
burglars casing our homes, we should fear the government's intimate
knowledge of the many details of our daily lives.
Feds implement perpetual
census: American Community Survey will be mailed out continually.
Reveal Everything Just to Keep a
Driver's License: Driving may obligate you to tell bureaucrats minute details of your health
problems and other personal matters. Dean C. Eger of New Bern, N.C., was stunned
when he received a 10-page questionnaire this month from the state Division of Motor Vehicles. Some
of the 114 questions were to be answered by him, the others to be filled out by his physician. Failure
to answer in 30 days "will result in cancellation or denial of your driving privilege."
Condit's Zone of Privacy — And
Ours: The press has done to him what he would do to us.
High-Tech Peeking Requires
Warrant: The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 across ideological lines (June 11, 2001) that police must
get warrants before using high-tech devices to search homes from the outside.
House Leadership Turns Up Heat on Privacy: House
Majority Whip Tom DeLay has urged the Bush administration to cut the U.S. from any participation in an international privacy-invading program being promoted
by Europeans. In a letter to Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, DeLay congratulates the Bush administration for refusing to go along with an attempt by the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to sanction low-tax nations for their supposedly "unfair" competition against the high-tax
welfare states.
EU
row on use of phone records: European Union ministers
approved a British-backed measure yesterday [6/27/2001] to allow the police access to
telephone, email and internet records.
Warning: Internet Privacy at
Risk: The effort to deprive you of the privacy that comes with the Internet — "the people's
medium" – is taking on worldwide Orwellian proportions.
Eurosnoops
Want to Invade Communications Privacy
Cyberbrother Is
Watching: Imagine not having to file an income tax form every year, or sending out change-of-address
notices or renewing your driver's license, because all the information concerning these personal matters is
part of a nationwide data bank. That world exists — it's called Finland.
Next FBI Director: Privacy or the
Jackboot? Your right to privacy could hang in the balance when President Bush nominates an FBI
director to replace Louis Freeh.
Feds Buy Citizens' Most Personal
Information: Banned by law from snooping around in the private lives of American citizens, the
FBI, IRS and about 35 other inquisitive government agencies just go out and buy information about citizens
from huge personal data-gathering companies.
HHS Chief to Alter Privacy Rules
Campaign Finance 'Reform' Risks
Privacy. Part of the bill that raises personal privacy issues is getting little attention.
Nosy Pupil Surveys Rile Parents
Privacy
Debate Rages as Government Increases Watchdog Role
Where
Does Privacy Begin? In the continuing saga of
government invasion of our personal privacy, today (02/20/2001) could be a landmark day.
"Wiretapped
nation": The British government's plan to wiretap the
entire country is so outrageous it seems to have been put forward just to see if
anybody is paying attention.
Firestorm Hits Capitol Hill As Americans Protest 2000
Census: Phone lines are ringing off the wall in Congressional Offices as Americans express their
outrage over the intrusive questions on the 2000 Census form.
House leader demands action
against Clinton invasion of medical privacy.
All That Data, All That Secrecy:
Big Brother may know who you are, but do you know who Big Brother is? If you showed up at the Federal
Trade Commission's workshop on the privacy implications of database marketing Tuesday, [3/13/2001] the answer
is probably still no.
The secret FISA court: Rubber stamping
on rights. (FISA = Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act)
Big Brother Goes High-Tech
Privacy a Victim of the Drug War
Big Brother Is Monitoring Us by Databases
Privacy
International – The 2000 US Big Brother Awards
Social Security Numbers:
How many of you remember when Social Security cards included a statement
that they were not to be used for identification? That was one of the
promises made when Social Security was established. Somehow that
disclaimer seems to have disappeared - new Social Security cards don't have it. Today
many states include a person's Social Security number on his or her driver's license, and
people are beginning to speculate about the Social Security number showing up
on the National ID Card, when
and if it materializes.
Frequently
Asked Questions on Social Security Numbers and Privacy
The
Privacy Act of 1974 is the primary law affecting the use of SSNs.
My Social Security Number: How Secure Is
It? When Social Security numbers were first issued in 1936, the federal government assured the
public that use of the numbers would be limited to Social Security programs. Today, however, Social
Security numbers are used for many purposes, including employee files, medical records, credit reports and
banking information. In fact, the Social Security number (SSN) is now required for dependents over one
year of age, and is the most frequently used recordkeeping number in the United States.
Data theft hit 80 percent of active military.
Social Security numbers and other personal information for as many as 2.2 million U.S.
military personnel — including nearly 80 percent of the active-duty force — were among the
data stolen from the home of a Department of Veterans Affairs analyst last month, federal officials said
yesterday [6/5/2006], raising concerns about national security as well as identity theft.
Stopping the Surveillance State:
For all intents and purposes, the Social Security number is now a national ID. The use of the Social
Security number has become so widespread that most Americans must produce a Social Security number to get a
fishing license, and members of Congress must show their Social Security number in order to vote on the House
floor.
Putting the SSN genie back in the bottle?
There were several stories in the news today about a delay in implementing new privacy-enhancing legislation in
Texas. All SSNs were to have been stricken from publicly-accessible documents, including title records,
deeds, tax liens and birth and death records, but in response to complaints that this work could not be
completed in time, Attorney General Greg Abbott issued a letter delaying the requirement by 60 days.
Privacy
Survival Guide: How to Take Control of Your Personal Information.
Princeton
Uses Social Security Numbers to Hack into Yale Admissions Database: reported in
Yale Daily News, 7/25/02
No problem with agencies sharing
data? A General Accounting Office report has claimed that privacy experts "have no problems" with
the collection and use of Social Security numbers by state motor vehicle agencies, though experts who spoke with
WorldNetDaily disagreed with the agency's assertion.
Your Social Security Number to be
Shared
Feds are exempt from mortgage
privacy notices: An estimated 60 percent of the mortgage market is not required to send
customers those privacy notices other consumers have been receiving, by law. If your mortgage is covered
by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, you likely won't even be asked whether you wish to "opt out" of having your name,
personal financial information and Social Security number exchanged with other marketers or entities.
Back to The Privacy Page
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