House reinstates anti privacy laws
Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted to extend and even make parts of the USA “Patriot Act” permanent1. I also took my 12 year old daughter to the credit union to open a savings account. While to most people, these might seem like very separate acts they are very much intertwined. As part of the “are you Osama bin Ladin?” part of the application they use your Social Security number to check you out. In my daughter’s case we provided our address (Patriot *demands* a physical address which discriminates against people in Northern Arizona since even cities the size of Page, AZ all use PO Boxes - the Postal Service will not deliver on the street. Period.), phone number, birth dates etc. The usual stuff when you open an account. What they don’t tell you is that they take that information, run an instant credit check and a check on a federal database. My daughter failed. While I did not expect her to have a credit report, she is only 12 after all, I did not expect to find out her address didn’t match. Didn’t match? This is a kid who doesn’t have a credit report - but they clearly, somewhere in one of the databases had our PO Box. Her birthdate also raised red flags. Up popped some familiar looking dates - her mother’s and mine.
Now I’m not sure which databases are “harvested” to supply this information, but this is scary. The credit union probably can get into trouble for me being able to see this information on the screen as well… since “Patriot” demands secrecy too, you’re not allowed to know if you are being investigated - so they can’t tell you if you’re not being investigated either.
When they start building the 6° database we will all be in it, we will all be terrorists or know someone who knows someone who knows a terrorist. It can only be a matter of time that we will be able to be arrested and held because someone we know, knows someone who knows something. (say that five times fast)
Remember that Patriot was not a response to 9/11/2001. 9/11 finally gave the backers enough public fear to pass it; they were after our liberties a long time before 9/11.
