You Are Being Watched, and There Is No Place to Hide

[Zorbuddha]

nterview

You Are Being Watched, and There Is No Place to Hide
An interview with Robert O'Harrow

By John W. Whitehead
03/31/05

Increasingly, we live in a surveillance state where everything we do and our every transaction, business or otherwise, is watched, videotaped and analyzed. There is virtually nothing that the surveillance state, growing data systems and information companies do not know about the most intricate details of our lives.

With the slightest mistake, however, you can be branded for life. Take, for example, Matthew Frost of Tampa, Fla., a businessman and father of two who simply wanted to vote in the 2000 presidential election. When he attempted to cast a ballot, the election worker told him: “Sorry, sir, you have a felony. You can’t vote.” Although it was a mistake and Frost had never been convicted of a felony, he still was not allowed to vote. Frost was a victim of a botched attempt by government officials to use a private data contractor “to help purge the electoral votes of felons and other ineligible people,” writes Robert O’Harrow in his revealing book No Place to Hide: Behind the Scenes of Our Emerging Surveillance Society (2005). This was “a glaring demonstration of what can happen when the government and private data services team up to target individuals,” notes O’Harrow. “The use of computerized personal information can—and often does—spin out of control.”

The company behind Frost’s exclusion was ChoicePoint, a Georgia-based organization that acts as a database of personal information. Their website boasts of being “the nation’s leading provider of identification and credential verification services.” Commonly referred to as a commercial data-broker, ChoicePoint provides companies with information on potential employees, insurance companies with information regarding the risk of new clients, and law enforcement agencies and homeland security with information on suspects of crimes. For the federal government, which is barred by the 1974 Privacy Act from forming a database, commercial database brokers like ChoicePoint have become the government’s own private intelligence agency.

oldSpeak had a chance to sit down with Robert O’Harrrow, Jr., whose thought-provoking book casts a watchful eye over the emergence of a security-industrial complex, the result of the post-9/11 marriage of private data and technology companies and government anti-terror initiatives. A reporter on the financial desk of the Washington Post and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for a series of Post articles on privacy and technology, O’Harrow created a beat covering information technology, marketing and privacy, delivering stories that mix investigative, explanatory and accountability reporting. More information about No Place to Hide is available at www.noplacetohide.net.

snip

http://www.rutherford.org/oldspeak/articles/interview/oharrow.html

[JDPriestly]

1. We need to amend the Constiution

to guarantee very explicitly our right to privacy. Unless we do, we will soon have no such right. I believe that an amendment of this sort would even appeal to Republicans.

[Zorbuddha]

2. We need to shore up the Constitution

or something.

Damn.

[NMMNG]

4. There's no way that will happen

Not with the Patriot Act usurping our right to privacy in every way possible. The only way to go right now is down, unless some rational people get into office and stop the insanity.

[wli]

3. First the military-industrial complex

Then the prison-industrial complex, and now the security-industrial complex.

How many of these can we take before we crack?

[Zorbuddha]

5. Crack?

Cracks are everywhere.

[Demeter]

6. I Hope The Watchers Are As Bored & Frustrated As I Am

with my so-called life.

[ThoughtCriminal]

7. That's a very good strategy

Here's a wonderful short film that shows it in action:

"Me and the Big Guy"
http://www.atomfilms.com/af/content/atom_1352

[Zorbuddha]

8. Thanks

for the heads-up.

[Demeter]

10. Loved the Movie!

While the hero is in his "Little Brother" phase, all I could think about was the people who believe they have a personal God listening to their every miniscule thought. Probably with the same result.

Lovely O. Henry twist at the end, too.

[Zorbuddha]

9. That's funny. I can understand frustrated

but how anyone can be bored in this world will always be a mystery to me.

[Jane Eyre]

11. Rutherford Institute is extremely right-wing

John Whitehead, of the right-wing Rutherford Institute, can be heard on right-wing Christian radio stations. His listeners are of the "Left Behind" fan club variety. They have been preaching for a long time about how the "mark of the beast" in the form of microchips under the skin will be a sign of the endtimes.

They believe that the devil will deceive many through his political machinations to become the leader of a one-world government. On second thought, maybe they have something there!!!

[Zorbuddha]

12. They seem to call all sides onto the carpet

from time to time.

This piece didn't seem propagandistic to me.