Military Data Collection Damned as Huge Threat to Privacy

[newswolf56]

By Ira Teinowitz

WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) -- Privacy advocates want the U.S. military to stop developing a database of millions of names, warning that instead of being used for recruiting purposes the database could lead to broader government tracking of personal information.

More than 100 groups, lead by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and including the American Civil Liberties Union and Rock the Vote, wrote to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld last week demanding the military's Joint Advertising and Market Research Studies unit abandon the database. They warned it carries a "potential for abuse and the threat to the personal privacy rights of a generation of American youth."

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Privacy advocates...worry that the laws that protect the public by forcing big business to correct or eliminate some information in databases don't apply to the government. They fear erroneous, derogatory or misleading information could be retained for years.

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Full text at: http://adage.com/news.cms?newsId=46472

My comments:

Once again, Bush and his administration demonstrate their true hostility toward constitutionally protected rights. Who can doubt this same database is already being used to track individual political and religious beliefs -- this by a regime that is ever more defiantly theocratic, ever more brazenly fascist.

The dangers here are multiplied ten thousandfold by the fact that Chief Justice Roberts and Supreme Court Appointee Miers are each said to deny there is a "right to privacy."