You Are a Suspect

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"If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you," warns William Safire. "Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend - all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as 'a virtual, centralized grand database [5].' To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you - passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance - and you have the supersnoop's dream: a 'Total Information Awareness' about every U.S. citizen. This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario. It is what will happen to your personal freedom in the next few weeks if John Poindexter [6] gets the unprecedented power he seeks." According to Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, Poindexter's proposed Total Information Awareness [7] system "could be the perfect storm for civil liberties in America. [8]"