Newsstand - Good news: Amendment advances to curb Total Information Awareness government spying

This Washington Post article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58695-2003Feb11.html) reports that a number of congresspersons are making progress in blocking funds for the Total Information Awareness program -- the government's effort to tie in all kinds of data about you from every source to create a massive spying operation on everything that you do.

(Sorry, the above synopsis is a bit biased http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif)

Thank goodness the USA is a democracy. And even better, the 2004 election for an actually elected administration. And even better will be if the Democrats get someone better than Al Sharpton, John Kerry, and Connecticut's Liebermen.

I say HILLARY all the way!! :-)

That's great news! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif I like to think that this indicates that people are starting to come to their senses and are contacting their elected representatives and telling them they do not want their civil rights abridged in any way, shape or form - now or ever. (Because if that's what we have to look forward to, we can just give up and tell everyone the terrorists won - http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif )

The US (and local US) media is terroizing the US people worse than the terrorists! The locals want to work for the Nationals and the Nationals have become the pawns of the government with their "commercial" promotion of "Terror Alert High" icons on the screen. What's worse, I see Osama-bin-Freak-Boy getting more freedom of speech than Americans.

We certainly need re-regulation of the wealth of US media. It can be dented if there were competitors bashing the US media in its current form (post Telecom Act of 1996).

SHADO

The hype here in DC is amazing -- almost as much panic as before a snowstorm. Everybody is buying rolls of duct tape and $86 boxes of plastic sheeting.

I'm decidedly a-political when it comes to partisanship (25 years in the military living under the Hatch Act does that to a person), but I'm pleased that the objection to Poindexter's and DARPA's blank check was very bi-partisan.

There's hope yet...

Meanwhile, for those of us who live in NYC, a SDNY federal judge has ruled that "because we live in a different world now" the NYPD can get their whole Red Squad operations going again (Handschu Guidelines).

Look for them to be infiltrating your organization and planting fake evidence any time now. And don't even walk by a protest on the street, or they'll be videotaping you and adding it to their files.

Seems like we can't get two pieces of good news in the same day. Hopefully an appeal will be made on it.

http://www6.law.com/lawcom/displayid.cfm?statename=NY&docnum=182059&table=news&flag=full