A Society Of Snoops!
GunnyG
War,
December 8, 1999 by: Phyllis Schlafly
As concerns fade about a Y2K breakdown of government computers,
Americans should be increasingly worried about how computer
efficiency gives the federal government extraordinary powers to
monitor the daily activities of law-abiding Americans. Unknown
to
most people, government databases are storing all kinds of
personal
information about every American.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has mandated that
all wireless providers by 2001 be able to pinpoint the location
of
wireless phone calls. Cell phones are going to be homing devices
for
the government to track our whereabouts.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) tried to impose
a
regulation called Know Your Customer. It was a plan to require
banks
to make a computer profile of all their customers' deposits and
withdrawals and report "inconsistent" transactions to a federal
database in Detroit called the Suspicious Activity Reporting
System.
After the comment period produced more than 250,000 negative and
only 3,000 positive comments, the FDIC backed down and on March
23 abandoned its plan temporarily.
However, during congressional consideration of the big
"financial
modernization" bill this summer, we discovered that many banks
are
already making customer profiles and selling them to
telemarketers.
The banking lobby successfully blocked an amendment that would
have required banks to get the prior consent of customers before
selling private financial information.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has proposed a
regulation
that would effectively give the government unlimited access to
everyone's personal travel records. The FAA gave $3.1 million to
Northwest Airlines to create software for a database of personal
travel
records, plus $7.8 million to other airlines to assist in
deploying it.
The 1996 Welfare Reform Act requires all employers to send the
name, address and Social Security number of every new worker,
and
every employee who is promoted, to a new government database
called the Directory of New Hires. This is a massive database
tracking nearly every worker in America.
In 1999 Congress authorized the linkage of this database with
the
Department of Education. Meanwhile, public schools are requiring
children to fill out nosy questionnaires revealing all sorts of
non-
academic information about attitudes, behavior, health and
family
privacy, which is then entered on databases.
The 1996 Kennedy-Kassebaum Act authorized the Department of
Health and Human Services (HHS) to assign a "unique health care
identifier" to every American so the government can enter and
track
individual medical records on a government database. Public
reaction
was so adverse that Congress put a moratorium on implementation.
The 1993 Comprehensive Childhood Immunization Act gave the
Department of Health and Human Services $400 million to induce
states to create databases of all children's vaccinations. By
giving
"rewards" to the state of $50, $75 or $100 per fully vaccinated
child,
states are financially motivated to make vaccines compulsory and
to
produce the proof by storing the information on a state
database.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is trying to link these
state
databases into a federal database containing every child's
medical
records. This will become a gatekeeper to deny admission to
daycare, kindergarten, school or college, or even access to
medical
care for any child who has not had all government-mandated
shots.
It will be easy to add all medical records to this database,
which
would then become the key to the government's ability to dictate
the
giving and rationing of health care. This would accomplish Bill
Clinton's original 1994 goal when he displayed his Health
Security
Card to a national television audience.
Another plan to collect private information on a government
database
involves sending "home visitors" into the homes of all first-
time
parents in the project called Healthy Families America.
Information is
entered on a nationwide computerized tracking system called the
Program Information Management System that can eventually be
combined with preschool and public school tracking systems.
The 1996 Immigration Act mandated that state driver's licenses
contain Social Security numbers as the unique numeric identifier
so
the federal government could use driver's licenses (a state
matter) as
a federal I.D. card. After public protest, this was repealed in
1999.
HHS is recruiting senior citizens to spy on their own physicians
by
offering a reward of up to $1000 if they call the toll-free
"Fraud
Hotline" and file a report that leads to a monetary "recovery"
from
their doctor. The harassment potential is enormous when 39
million
seniors start trying to collect a bonus if the doctor's office
enters the
wrong code number on a Medicare form.
This government monitoring is allegedly for the purpose of
locating
terrorists, money launderers, drug kingpins, Medicare and
welfare
cheats, student loan delinquents, and deadbeat dads. But law
enforcement must not be allowed to turn us into a society of
snoops.
We should prohibit the federal government from building, or
assisting
the states or private corporations to build, databases of
personal
information on American citizens that is none of the
government's
business. Only totalitarian regimes monitor the private actions
of
law-abiding citizens.
Phyllis Schlafly column
12-08-99
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