more meaningless words

At the bottom of page 29 in No Place to Hide, the author states the USA Patriot Act went far beyond what even the most ardent law enforcement supporters had considered politically possible before the attacks. “In the first year alone, more than a thousand non citizens were detained without being charged, and their identities were kept secret. Thousands of Muslim men … were placed under surveillance by federal investigators across the country. Their movements, telephone calls, email, Internet use, and credit card charges were scrutinized around the clock – a technology driven campaign…

Page 30
In 2003, the government for the first time, asked for more secret wiretap warrants for terrorism investigations than criminal cases, 1,700 to 1,400, respectively,, [not really significant I don’t think since they don’t request warrants in real life, huh]

Outside law enforcement circles, no one will ever know who was targeted by those FISA warrants. [that was something I mentioned Bush said earlier but it doesn’t say his name here.

Page 32
The situation seems far more dire to Jim Dempsey, who since the Patriot Act’s approval was named director of the Center for Democracy and Technology. “Its an electronic door-to-door search,” Dempsey said. “You can’t physically go door to door or stop every car on the highway. But now we have the [ability] to do it unbeknownst to the people. Now it can be done electronically and constantly.”

p. 33

Senator Leahy said, “The temptation will be more and more – especially in a polarized society where there is fear, whether it’s the Red Scare in the fifties or terrorism in this century – to use those databanks. At some point it doesn’t matter if they’re public or private, at some point, they will be used by the government to determine who is a good American and who is a bad American. Not determined through prosecution, trial, but based on what came up on someone’s computer screen.”

p. 34
Charles Morgan was the CEO of a company called Acxiom in Conway, Arkansas, near Little Rock. In addition to names, ages, addresses, and telephone numbers, the company also collects information about marital status, ages of children, and track individual’s estimated incomes, property values, and the make and value of their automobiles. They maintain unlisted phone numbers and details about the people’s occupations, religions, and ethnicities. They sometimes know what people read, phoned and Internet orders, and vacation destinations. Acxiom refers to as ‘purchase behavior and lifestyle data. Its core service is called InfoBase, which is the largest collection of U.S. consumer and telephone data available in one source.

Acxiom helps companies such as, Land’s End, Citibank, and Allstate target their customers better. They manage billions of financial records for the privately owned credit bureau Trans Union. It enables drug companies to target those in need of medicine and screen people for jobs and track down debtors. At one time in Acxiom’s early years (named Demographics), there was a company across the street called Ward School Bus Manufacturing Company that wanted to help the Democratic National Committee raise money and asked for a list of the most likely contributors. Demographics provided similar information to help Dale Bumpers, Arkansas Governor become a U.S. Senator, and eventually a Washington Lobbyist for Acxiom.

Acxiom found its lists being used by banks to track down debtors, but very often used as a political tool, as when the government tracked labor activities or those opposed to WWI. The efforts became rampant during the 50s and 60s, when the FBI, the Army, and shadowy conservative groups such as the Church League created dossiers about tens of thousands of students, anti-war activists, social crusaders, and others deemed undesirable. [Bush I’d kill u if you were torturing someone that I secretly respect, for their own protection, for being gay ‘undesirable’- me, I don’t give that much shitt about,, probably cause im stuck in this hole,, but dude u are a jackoff pedophile, probably-- but there are tons of gay people that I respect and I know that I can’t really kill u -- define bully Mr. President – and is it only relevant when someone threatening your pipeline?]

Information compilers have always found relatively little standing in the way of these efforts. Laws didn’t exist or were too weak to matter.

A little history on how data mining got its start back in the early 1960’s. Some 250 businesses began collecting and brokering any personal details they could acquire. Magazine publishers, hoteliers, car dealerships, and other business people found out they could make extra cash by selling the names, addresses, and preferences of their regular customers. Dunhill Industry List Company was a notable leader in the sale of private details back in those days. Journalist Vance Packard described the process in the mid 1960’s to go something like this: “They first get information from people seeking credit, then the credit bureaus add data collected from credit issuers, newspapers, and public records. Investigators could then knock on doors and get information from landlords, family, neighbors, and coworkers, but rarely ever verified. Another major force at that time was the Atlanta-based Retail Credit Company, later to become Equifax. They had 7,000 investigators compiling data on 45 million adults. Arthur R. Miller, a Michigan University academic said in 1971, “The new information technologies seem to have given birth to a new social virus – ‘data-mania.’ We must begin to realize what it means to live in a society that treats information as an economically desirable commodity and a source of power.

Oh yeah, also I forgot to mention, the government got into the business also, as Clerks across the country began selling lists of births, marriages, new families, and taxes to companies like Dunhill.

Acxiom had the ability to combine dozens or characteristics about people simultaneously to create profiles, compiled with statistical models, enabled the company to better predict what people were likely to buy or do.

Technology forecaster Paul Saffo, Director for the Institute for the Future, liked to cite a toy popular a few years ago called the Furby. It recorded speech and appeared to talk. This was mentioned in the book and it reminds me of the stuffed monkey at the library which may very well be a doll like Furby used for surveillance, but just guessing.

Much of the information Axcium manages and enhances comes from data heavy retailers like Sears Roebuck, Hallmark cards, groceries like Safeway, Land’s End mail order, and the publisher Rodale. Nearly all the top banks send data to Acxiom, including Bank One Financial Services, Bank of America, MBNA American Bank, and Charles Schwab. Also, GM, Toyota, AT&T, other telcos, Pfizer, other drug cos, Microsoft and IBM.

Helping companies make sense of all this information became one of Acxiom’s main goals in the 1990’s. Profiling people became their service rather than just a list provider. Acxiom knew, to do this well for its customers, it had to acquire even more information about them. They partnered with ADVO-System Inc. that provided ads to 52 million households. Another partner was R. L. Polk & Co., which was as old and large as Acxiom, but provided ‘automobile intelligence’ about car owners. Polk said, “Information is Power.” In 1996, Acxiom bought Direct Media Inc., the nations largest list manager and broker. Other companies provided data like DataQuick List Service, Partners’ Marketing, American Data Resources, and I Rent America. Abacus Direct Corp., a retailers consortium customer database joined as a partner which signaled a momentous change to apply cutting-edge behavior modeling to every individuals’ report. A company that partnered with Abacus a few weeks before the agreement with Acxiom was a company known as HNC Software that specializes in Artificial Intelligence software [the son of a bitch] that can analyze billions of transactions and learn from them to predict what an individual is likely to do,, [how they heck :o(()) did my perpetrators screw this up so bad],, Oh, HNC [commie I bet] will apply an Abacus aggregate to enhance the ‘prior purchasing data’ for financial products with their clients. [they could very well be referring to our savings opened up to the greediest scum on the Earth who have tons of strategies to take it,, just guessing,,] But the next company gives me bad feelings too,, One of the most important partners for Acxiom was Union Tank Car Company, a railway car leasing firm that created a holding company called Trans Union,, TU was in a hurry to grow and purchased the Credit Bureau of Cook County with 3.6 million files in file cabinets. In 1972, TU created a system called Credit Reporting Online Network Utility System (CRONUS) which revolutionized the credit reporting system two decades before the WWW was popular,, Trans Union kept expanding and growing to become a privately held National Credit Bureau and had a file on nearly every adult, TU wanted Acxiom to help work with banking customers to target people who, based on data profiles, might be likely to sign up for credit cards,,, [NAZI,NAZI,NAZI,NAZI,NAZIguessing],, Harry Gambill, an Arkansas State University alumni that knew Charles Morgan personally ran the show at Trans Union,,, Acxiom and TU made an expansion that played out across the financial and data industry which would dramatically accelerate the collection of personal information in the future,, Acxiom took over the management of TU data and they focused together on how to better profile and target customers.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said that TU provided lists to its customers that looked too much liked credit reports and the Fair Credit Report Act of 1970 was to protect individuals against credit report fraud,, The FTC told Trans Union that they were breaking the law by selling those lists, back in 1992.

The bible of mailing lists, SRDS Direct Marketing List Source also joined Acxiom,, It had a Gay America Megafile with almost 700,000 names,,

The above corporate saboteurs were taken directly from No Place to Hide by Robert O'Harrow, Jr.
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Bush, you gotta stop the laws,, Its nonstop torture and didn’t you tell me that on some daytime announcement,, opposite day gibberish of course,, but I could tell u had to rehearse it,, Cause you had to make it look like you were lying so the dumb as dirt idiot could recognize it,,, You said, "Anyone who thinks they are being tortured is crazy," so that I could tell you were lying,,

Dude you always lie and its not that obvious because you rehearse a lot,, “I don’t recall.” What a menace,, u fuckks keep ugotknockedthefvckout of me,, four schools now,, Who’s gonna pay all that sallie mae,, will they refund my money if I tell them Bush is terrorizing me,, what about the credit cards,, your pals maxed,, dude im suing the fuckk outta Verizon for allowing the CIA to target an American citizen which is always against the law, here or abroad,., I want a phone I can’t converse on in privacy,, And, that won’t GPS track me everywhere,, the phone acting as surveillance bug for more exploit of the innocent,, why don’t I have a charge? For a crime? Am I in your FISA court you fuckin fag,, fucku,, Dude, you know that every person alive is required by law to treat me inhumanly, without remorse,, They encourage or try to motivate me by reminding me that “most poor people spend most of their lives distraught and unhappy.” Was that you that typed that message? Why can’t you remove the laws,, dude they are fake,, fake security,, fake terrorism,, well in the textbooks u taught me state funded terrorism on home nation happens a lot,, and the fact that terrorism and guerilla warfare are more efficient ways to fight a war,, DUDE GET OFF THE PHILIPINES,, so really all ur double talk, lies and hate pretty much worked,, does everyone feel the hate from the hate mongers of the Republican party? Newt, Rush, Ann C,, Bush in our pitiful gullible faces,, well assshitfuck you lie to us,, and one of those F- 9/11 videos,, u fucker,, u even smiled a little chuckle saying u don’t know what its like to lose a child in war maybe,, something completely disrespectful for the troops that u lied to and killed,, completely,, And Cheney dude,, what an ass,, I saw him in an old Political Science textbook as Sec of Defense talking to an audience with Colin Powel and Gen Schwarzkopf,, Oh yeah, in that same PS text, when your dad said “A New World Order” like a punk,, lol,, not really, but he was talking about Russia huh,, Uhh Mr. Bush, did you tell us you were friends with them?

So bullshitt,, I AM NOT MILITARY,, I saw on Cheney’s website (There are no people I’d hate to know things about than you trash gents.) that he can appoint or admit people to the military,, But mentally incompetent would never be admitted,, But I read about the permission or some nonsense that the U.S. Military is permitted to experiment on soldiers,,