1 January 2006 (# 27)
We begin another year confronting a government that is ours but that does not serve most of us. In fact, the government continues to devise as many ways as possible to deceive and distort what it is doing. Perhaps we all need to spend a few moments reflecting on some basics -- like the fact that the government is all of us.
We pay taxes, we underwrite debt, in other words, we are the reason Bush has a salary and some contract to Halliburton to spend our money gets signed.
We the people … own the assets of what our capital has been used to purchase, lease, and create. So why is it that we have allowed numerous obstacles to be established to prevent us from knowing what our government does?
Convicted multi-count felon, Admiral John Poindexter wanted to spy on all of us and, as we’ve recently learned, he wasn’t alone. Maureen Dowd neatly summarized the Admiral’s vision in this May, 2003, Op-Ed:
Admiral Poindexter, who supervised the strutting Oliver North during the Iran-contra machinations, is now supervising the Pentagon's attempt to create an Orwellian "virtual, centralized grand database," which could put a spyglass on Americans' every move, from literally the way Americans move to their virtual moves, scanning shopping, e-mail, bank deposits, vacations, medical prescriptions, academic grades and trips to the vet. (Sometimes pets are the first to go in biological warfare.)
Link: http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F00D1FF63A5A0C728EDDAC0894DB404482Admiral Poindexter’s
“Total Information Awareness” program was scuttled (supposedly) by Congress, as you know. But, I’d like to reflect for a moment on the Admiral’s past and his considerable technical skills. John Markoff wrote an article in the
New York Times on January, 20, 2003, entitled
“Poindexter's Still a Technocrat, Still a Lightning Rod” that contained the following observations:
For over two decades the admiral has been preoccupied with giving battlefield commanders -- including the commander in chief –
better information during times of crisis. For the last year, he has once again been pursuing that goal, from within the Pentagon.
<clip>
According to several scientists who have worked with Admiral Poindexter at the Pentagon, that vision, to surround military decision makers with high-tech computer systems that make sense of the battlefield and
are able to display vast quantities of information, led directly to the idea of Total Information Awareness, known as T.I.A. <clip>
In the 1990's, as a military consultant, he promoted a variety of efforts, including the Command Post of the Future project, to provide more information to military planners via computer networks. Another project, known as Genoa, which was also intended to give intelligence planners and decision makers better information, preceded the more ambitious Total Information Awareness project, which Mr. Poindexter now directs.
Link: http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F50D15FE3E540C738EDDA80894DB404482So, we’ve got a super-geek who sees the immediate access to primary information as essential in a decision making process. We also have a person who has not come even close to serving us, the citizens of this Nation, whom have paid for all his high-tech wizardry and suffered his willful disregard for the law and Congress -- including the following stunts:
While spending time at President Reagan's ranch in California as the national security adviser, according to several former military officers who worked with him, the admiral would sit for hours with his Grid laptop computer, then very high-tech. Connected to a mainframe computer by a satellite phone, he would patiently program and polish the software that controlled the White House's newly installed e-mail system.
It was Admiral Poindexter's technological expertise that permitted him to create a back door, named "private blank check," in the e-mail system to circumvent normal White House channels, according to David A. Wallace, a specialist in electronic records at the School of Information at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The system made it possible for the admiral to oversee the illegal activities of Col. Oliver North.
Admiral Poindexter's legal troubles later stemmed in part from the 6,000 messages he destroyed with Colonel North.
He was convicted on five felony counts, including lying to Congress, destroying documents and obstructing Congress in its investigation, but his conviction was overturned on appeal.
"Clearly Poindexter consciously manipulated the system to act in a way to hide information," Mr. Wallace said.
"When faced with a system of checks and balances, he decided to act illegally. What does this say about the person who we are putting in charge of designing the most comprehensive surveillance system on U.S. citizens ever?"
Link: http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F50D15FE3E540C738EDDA80894DB404482Yes, we have a super-geek, with access to millions and millions of dollars of our money who opted to break the law and has yet to remedy his crimes.
I think we should give him the opportunity to serve the citizens of America. I think we should call upon Admiral Poindexter to lead an effort to design a system of
Total Information Awareness -- For All Americans.
And, I think we should strip away all the Executive Order and legislative barriers to the vast majority of primary information generated by our government. The notion that a Freedom of Information Act request or other forms of request for information by our Congressional representatives can be stonewalled is totally unacceptable. We pay for every aspect of the creation and propagation of that information and its uses. We should be able to access it whenever, wherever -- from libraries, schools, airports, homes, offices, ... .
I realize a few exceptions to unfettered information access must be maintained for genuine National Security, contract negotiation, personal information security, ongoing criminal proceedings, and a few other reasons. But, it is necessary for all of us to examine just how “National Security” and “Executive Privilege” are being used to commit crimes, daily, no different than those Bush and his neoconster minions have now been exposed of doing, and that Poindexter and North should have done jail time for committing.
Let’s call upon Admiral Poindexter to remedy his mis-deeds and task him with the challenge to enable the most important decision makers in the Republic – each citizen – to have the real-time access to what their government is doing. We have the technology; we have no excuse not to deploy it so that every citizen can access their government – not some propagandized version, but the nitty-gritty. It’s time for folk like Poindexter to stop enabling Presidents to be dictators, and begin enabling citizens to hold their employees, including him, accountable.
I have little reason to fear almost all of my fellow citizens; remarkably, most of the ones I truly do fear get a pay check because I pay my taxes and they get to live in places like 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. That’s got to stop and the remedy begins with
Total Information Awareness – For All Americans.Happy New Year,
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