Both Wes Clark and Robert O'Harrow Jr spoke at this 2003 Conference:
"“NO PLACE TO HIDE: WHERE THE DATA REVOLUTION MEETS HOMELAND SECURITY”
MODERATOR:
P. J. CROWLEY, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS
FEATURING:
GENERAL WESLEY K. CLARK
JAMES X. DEMPSEY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY
NUALA O’CONNOR KELLY, CHIEF PRIVACY OFFICER, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
ROBERT O’HARROW, JR., REPORTER, WASHINGTON POST; AUTHOR, NO PLACE TO HIDE
Do you have any idea who Robert O'Harrow Jr is? Well it's easy to do research, but let me help you. Start with "No Place To Hide", actually the full name of his book is: "No Place to Hide: Behind the Scenes of Our Emerging Surveillance Society." O'Harrow is America's leading investigative reporter on data collection and surveillance. You can go to this web site:
"No Place To Hide", Robert O'Harrow Jr., and the Center for Investigative Reporting.
http://www.noplacetohide.net /
That will give you plenty of real research to keep you busy, and I'll get back to that in a minute, but back to the conference I mention above. Here is what Robert O'Harrow Jr. said about General Wes Clark at that public session:
ROBERT O’HARROW:
"...There is a guy that I think many of us in the room respect and admire deeply, General Clark, and he serves as a great example of someone who was deeply involved in representing a company called Axiom. And Axiom was one of those companies that responded with – I know that from my reporting – very patriotic motives. They had a lot of that as a marketer and they shared it and they shared it to good effect; it helped. They also saw ways that they could change their business model and become part of the security industrial complex. And one of the people that was helping open doors for Axiom in Washington was General Clark. The reason I raise that is because I kept finding that General Clark got to places before I did and people spoke admiringly of his ability to say what he knew, to say what he didn’t know, to play it straight, and to in every case do it in the smart way, which is why people respect him."
That's right, Robert O'Harrow knows all about Clark and the Government and Acxiom, and O'Harrow came away from his investigations respecting and admiring Wes Clark deeply. Here are comments that Wes Clark made in reply to O'Harrow at the same conference:
WES CLARK:
"...Can I just say one more thing about this impulse to privacy that you’ve mentioned, Bob, because when I was doing this – and I want to say this because Nuala is here, because when the government starts working programs and it does know where they go and where they going they are always cautious because everybody knows that these programs that do data are very sensitive. Before the government could even get a grip on some of these programs, when the word comes out on them they are blasted before people even understand it. So on the one hand, I understand exactly why there is an impulse for privacy. People – companies like Axiom were told, “Look, you just can’t compete for this contract if you talk about this to the press because we don’t know what the program is and we want to have – we want to be able to –“ this is – I’m speaking for the government – “We want to be able to see what data you have available. We want to figure out if we can use it, and we don’t want to have to answer a million inquiries from the press about it until we get it done. Then we’ll run it through.
You know, my instinct on it was a little bit different than the government’s, but I didn’t have any influence on them. I mean, my instinct would have to bring in the ACLU and to say, “Please create a group that’s sort of like a trusted group that we can bounce ideas off of and we want to run these ideas by you. And if you have strong objections, we want to hear them. We want to hear them right upfront. What we ask is that you will work with us in a collaborative sense so that – you know, you tell us before you run out to the Washington Post the next day and we have got (unintelligible.)” So, you know, we are just exploring ideas. We want to try to put this together and I do think there is a need for that. There is a need for enough privacy in governmental decision-making that the government can come out with programs and then have a chance to explain them, not to take anything away from the press because that balance is a dynamic balance. It’s fought by and maintained by hardworking reporters who make a lot of phone calls and get turned down a lot, but it’s a very important public duty.
So I am not sure if the balance is right is what I am saying. I don’t know if it’s right and that is one of issues we ought to explore...".
What other Democrats do you know nowadays who are advocating for the ACLU? Seems like most of them are afraid to even mention those letters anymore.
To save some readers time, here is a little more information on O'Harrow and the work he does taken from that Center for Investigative Reporting Web Site and from reviews of his work. Here is the intro blurb for the web site:
"When you go to work, stop at the store, fly in a plane, or surf the web, you are being watched. They know where you live, the value of your home, the names of your friends and family, in some cases even what you read. Where the data revolution meets the needs of national security, there is no place to hide."
Here is a review of "No Place To Hide":
"This surveillance state is not a futuristic place conjured in a Philip K. Dick novel or 'Matrix'-esque sci-fi thriller. It is post-9/11 America, as described in Robert O'Harrow Jr.'s unnerving new book, No Place to Hide - an America where citizens' 'right to be let alone,' as Justice Louis Brandeis of the Supreme Court once put it, is increasingly imperiled, where more and more components of our daily lives are routinely monitored, recorded and analyzed."
- Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
I don't know what your situation is or was, but I am self employed and fly a lot on business. I was there at the airports after 9/11 waiting in line with people to get onto planes, and people were scared stiff back then. Planes left half full because people were afraid to get on them and it was killing small businesses all over the country that depend on providing services to travelers. 98% per cent of the public want to have passengers boarding air planes screened for possible terrorist connections, and I am firmly in that 98%. I just want it done right, with adequate sensitivity to civil liberties, and that always was and remains Clark's position. During the time period cited in your "research", almost all leading Democrats were meeting with and cooperating with Bush Administration officials up to and including including Cheney and his hench men, to work together to provide security inside America from further attacks which most people then believed would soon be coming.
I wish there were more people like Wes Clark involved back then, more people who like Clark would win the admiration of someone like Robert O'Harrow Jr., more people like Wes Clark who believed that the ACLU should have been brought into the loop for consultations about civil liberties implications from day one. I'm glad Clark was involved, and I'm proud of the importance he paid then and now to protecting American's civil liberties.
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