Big Brother's Gonna Be Watching Your Spending Habits
If this doesn't scare the hell out of you, it's likely that nothing will.
A massive database that the government will use to monitor every purchase made by every American citizen is a necessary tool in the war on terror, the Pentagon said Wednesday...This story has been a hot topic in a variety of places around the net. William Safire wrote a very good column on it last week. There's also some additional background in this post of mine from November 9th.
[Undersecretary of Acquisitions and Technology Edward] Aldridge said the database, which he called another "tool" in the war on terror, would look for telltale signs of suspicious consumer behavior.
Examples he cited were: sudden and large cash withdrawals, one-way air or rail travel, rental car transactions and purchases of firearms, chemicals or agents that could be used to produce biological or chemical weapons.
It would also combine consumer information with visa records, passports, arrest records or reports of suspicious activity given to law enforcement or intelligence services.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is home to the Pentagon's brightest thinkers -- the ones who built the Internet. DARPA will be in charge of trying to make the system work technically.
Rear Adm. John Poindexter, former national security adviser to President Reagan, is developing the database under the Total Information Awareness Program. Poindexter was convicted on five counts of misleading Congress and making false statements during the Iran-Contra investigation. Those convictions were later overturned, but critics note that his is a dubious resume for someone entrusted with so sensitive a task.
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