Too much information scarrrrrryyyyy

http://www.aclu.org/pizza/images/screen.swf

American Criminal Liberties Union at it again.

\\\STRIPES/// wrote on Jan 26, 2006:Go to #2

American Criminal Liberties Union at it again.

I know, I know... How about a comment on the link other than the aclu... It's the direction we seem to be going in this technology based society, too much info IMO.

It's getting closer all the time, heck our local pizza place has almost that much info about us already, from caller ID they just ask if we want our usual order etc. they have all the rest...name, phone, address, and obviously our "order history". And if you ever use anything at Wal-Mart or an affiliate like credit cards, debit, checks, Sam's Club card or whatever then Wal-Mart has more info on you and your buying habits than you can imagine (yes even checks, that little reader they scan them through grabs all that info just from the bank records. Only the US Government has a computer system more powerful than Wal-Mart...not even Google!) and every store that has some kind-of discount card or rebate card or whatever does the same thing. They have a database that knows every product you buy, when you buy it, etc. and if they have a pharmacy they have all your medication records so they can figure out the rest. (You didn't think you were getting that discount for nothing did you?) I had a doctor explain to me when it first went into effect that the HIPPA "privacy" laws (all that junk you have to sign at any doctor or pharmacy) was really the opposite of privacy. In the guise of "protecting" your privacy from other individuals (which he said the old laws did just as well) HIPPA really requires every aspect of healthcare providers to collect & report to centralize all your medical data in some database somewhere. Since then we changed insurance companies for example and the new company will only pay for "X" amount of a certain medication I take each month (the pharmacy said different companies set different amounts) so the cash payment for the extra amount prescribed by my doctor is higher than the co-pay for the prescription...and because of the computers they can't fill 2 prescriptions at once so I have to take the first prescription & when it runs out go back & get the rest of it in cash to have a one month supply...what a HASSLE! That's one reason you are seeing so many "general" practitioners refer you for a battery of tests or send you to specialists for anything unusual...it's to cover their rear in "the system" in case anything doesn't match up in all the databases, not because they don't know what's wrong (my regular physician of over 10 years didn't just get dumber in the last few years, he even apologized a year or so ago when he explained he literally "had" to send me to a specialist for something he would have just treated in the past, told me exactly what the specialist was going to do (test followed by this & that) and it happened exactly as he predicted...it's the system.) But it's not just here, I heard an interview with a very old doctor from Hiroshima the other day. He was a young doctor and had been sent about 6 miles out of town over some hills on the morning "the bomb" dropped so he survived with little effects. From then until now he has treated & documented those affected by it all these years. His comment that caught my attention was how the government there had agreed years ago to pay approx. $1,000 US for "compensation" to those affected by the blast. There was a zone of several miles or so from "ground zero" a person had to prove they were in to receive the money. As the years went by and more people who had no effects initially started to file claims for cancers & other such radiation related things they kept making the "zone" smaller & smaller until now it is only several thousand feet. Of course anyone that close was killed instantly or died long ago so effectively they still have this "compensation" program but don't have to pay anybody. (His mission as an old man nearing the end of his life is speaking on the dangers of what a nuclear weapon does over many years and the great danger these days from all the different countries who have some type nuclear weapons with a government that isn't stable & might decide to "pull the trigger" on one) Being "in the business" I know how easy it is for crackers & hackers to intercept stuff like e-mails or other unencrypted on-line activity so I'm sure the government could do it with no problem at all, and somewhere all those law enforcement, pizza joint, medical places, & Wal-Mart computers are sending data back to somewhere, over the same basic Internet I'm using to post this, so any "hole" in any one of those can in theory open a hole to the others...just hope the pizza joint has a good security guy in their IT department or Wal-Mart will even know what kind of pizza we prefer

You're right on it Don.. The problem is I think big brother if they wanted to has always been watching us. Computers has made it so much easier.. Just think what they know about us at the phone and power company.

That's the deal. In old shots of J. Edgar's days you would see the huge rooms with millions of Index cards and thousands of workers...and to tap a phone somebody had to actually hide stuff or clip onto wires somewhere... Now it's just racks of servers & a few IT guys with some heavy duty software...they flip a switch or click a mouse and they are watching...and don't forget if you use LoJack or OnStar or other GPS, they even know where you were exactly (within inches) at the time you made that cell phone call...