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Pentagon to Track American Consumer Purchases

Fox News 11/21/02: Major Garrett

Original Link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,70992,00.html

WASHINGTON — 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.

Edward Aldridge, undersecretary of Acquisitions and Technology, told reporters that the Pentagon is developing a prototype database to seek "patterns indicative of terrorist activity." Aldridge said the database would collect and use software to analyze consumer purchases in hopes of catching terrorists before it's too late.

"The bottom line is this is an important research project to determine the feasibility of using certain transactions and events to discover and respond to terrorists before they act," he said.

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.
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In two months, it'll be 2003.

Consumer privacy is on its way out, especially if the American are not sufficiently prepared to counteract such a development.

Neverthless, it's fine, as long as it's used strictly to detect terrorist cash flows.....

Big Brother is alive and well it seems. Scary stuff to me man. Big editorial about this and other things going on right now in the country in my paper this morning. Basically the writer said once these freedoms are lost, its going to be hard to get them back. Really scary stuff to me.

The silence from the center and the officials of the two major parties on these scary developments really troubles me. We are moving closer and closer to the sort of system that was in place in East Germany or the Soviet Union, only our current technological capabilities far exceed those of the two failed Communist states. Our Attorney General, no friend of privacy, even proposed a national TIPS system a while ago, remember, which would have made Erich Honecker proud. And John Poindexter of all people is running the Total Information Archive--perhaps he could take points from ex-KGB head Vladimir Putin! I usually have little good to say about the far right, but thankfully some of them have stepped forward to criticize what is really a grossly overreaching effort--and for what? Just improving the systems already in place would have screened out or identified most if not all of the 9/11 terrorist wackos....

[quote]Originally posted by bluebird48234:
Neverthless, it's fine, as long as it's used strictly to detect terrorist cash flows.....

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Nothing like blind faith in our government...

Once the feds get their hands on this information, they won't be able to resist using it in every way they can.

FREE LEGAL ADVICE...

Do not use debit cards for purchases.

Limit use of credit cards to absolute necessity.

Do not use "frequent shopper" discount-type systems.

Be aware that other "smart cards", such as employer-subsidized Metro passes or building passes, are already used by your employer to track your movement.

Avoid chat rooms (bulletin boards are somewhat better).

Avoid Internet purchases.

And...

NEVER EVER disclose your social security number unless it is absolutely critical. It is not necessary to disclose your SSN to write a check or to identify yourself.

Anyone read The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood? The first step for the emerging military theocracy was to convert society to a cashless society. Then credit was cancelled to all women to force dependence upon men.

Our current situation is not a man -woman thing, but this Pentagon thing obviously scares the hell out of me.

gj

This database brought to you courtesy of republican John Poindexter - a guy who was convicted of conspiracy, lying to Congress, defrauding the government, and destroying evidence. Makes perfect sense to me!!

I'm a big fan of old-fashioned cash, for precisely these reasons.

I am truly alarmed at the willingness of the American public to surrender hard-won privacy rights with nary a peep of protest. And when I tell people my feelings on this, it gets dismissed as whiny political correctness--"It's inevitable, so you might as well accept it & surrender." The company is in control, not the customer.

Just an anecdote . . . in my home town the last major supermarket chain just went to the "loyalty card" system; thus consumers here no longer have no choice of a store that doesn't charge differential pricing to those not willing to allow their buying habits to be tracked. At the same time it introduced the cards, I noticed an increase in its prices across the board. (I had made a habit of shopping here precisely because they didn't have the cards.) At other times I would get around the privacy problem by making up a name when I apply for one of the cards, or would just borrow one from the person behind me in the check-out line. Recently I saw where one store has posted signs expressly prohibiting customers from loaning their cards. At another store, I went to apply for one of the cards, using a fake name & WAS ASKED FOR ID. I refused, left my groceries on the counter, & walked out.

I think Naomi Klein had it right in her assessment of this state of affairs: NO CHOICE.

(Good god, I can be so full of it sometimes!)

[ November 22, 2002: Message edited by: Billy ]

Isn't this something Hitler tried to do?

Silly William! How could Hitler have done this when Al Gore had not yet invented the credit card?

GJ, "Handmaid's Tale" is a great movie, too, but don't worry; things are nowhere near, nor about to become, as oppressive as the left would have you believe. Fear and loathing is their stock and trade.

[quote]Originally posted by gmginsfo:
...things are nowhere near, nor about to become, as oppressive as the left would have you believe. Fear and loathing is their stock and trade.

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That should be "... are their stock...." Whatever happened to the well-rounded college man?

The left? This guy? Alex Jones? I don't think so.

Twin, thanks for the correction. Proof that even the most well-rounded of degree holders aren't immune from mistakes. Glad you're paying attention.

As for Alex Jones, he's a new one to me, but he looks like a total creech.

[quote]Originally posted by Billy:
in my home town the last major supermarket chain just went to the "loyalty card" system]

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Just out of curiosity, don't you have a Walmart Supercenter in your town? Even waaaaaaaay up here in Montana we have them, and I have never heard of Walmart doing that stupid saver card thingy.

As for the other places, when I do happen to shop at one of them, I usually just listen to the person in front of me and use their number, or ask for a new appilication, and then never send it in.

[quote]Originally posted by William1865:
Isn't this something Hitler tried to do?

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Nope, but Stalin's secret service did attempt this level of personal invasion, only they lacked the technology. They did have human assistance, though. But the link between the snooping Soviet model and the steadily encroaching government of Bushashcroftpoindexter perhaps isn't apparent or important to some of you--let the government (THE GOVERNMENT!!!) spy on American citizens, while W., Rice and others admit in the new Bob Woodward book that fully protecting Americans in our is "impossible." Oops, we can still bomb Iraq if nothing else....

[quote]GJ, "Handmaid's Tale" is a great movie, too

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It's also a modern opera, by the Danish composer Poul Roders. I have a recording of it and it's excellent. BTW, they're doing it in Minneapolis in May, it might be worth a weekend trip. Hmmm...the Twins are at home during the operatic timeframe, playing the Dead Sox, Royals and ChiSox. Shouldn't have any trouble getting tickets to the Homer Dome.......

I watched the John Hurt/Richard Burton version of 1984 the other day. Excellent movie with some, of course, interesting parallels to now. One of the things that stood out: the idea of a never-ending state of war (see: War on Terrorism) as a way to distract people.

You know, I gave up long ago the idea that I was immune to government/Big Business snooping. To be honest, I just don't care. So what if THEY know that I have $1.72 in my bank account, log on to gay sex sites and buy a ton of Marie Callendar's Fettucine Pasta with Chicken and Broccoli dinners-in-a-box? I'm sure my activities with Queer Nation were duly noted somewhere. *Shrug*

I have a friend who's very intelligent and not prone to saying stupid things. For years, he's been warning me about the government implanting computer chips in people in lieu of Social Security cards/ID's. So, you'd be a human barcode, basically. I'd mock him for smoking too much pot when we were in high school but he'd insist it was true and that it was going to happen. Well, f**k me if 6 months ago the front page of the Los Angeles Times didn't have an article about the initial roll-out of, you guessed it, implantable chips for humans. Oh how my friend cackled then.

[ November 25, 2002: Message edited by: Jim Allen ]