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Title: Intelligence database worrying some [TEXAS]
Source:
My San Antonio.com
URL Source: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/me ... 07.04B.BigBrother.3220fee.html
Published: Sep 4, 2007
Author: R.G. Ratcliffe
Post Date: 2007-09-04 05:42:34 by noone222
Keywords: None
Views: 103
Comments: 5
AUSTIN — After a commercial airline pilot testified before a government agency against the construction of a nuclear power plant, the Department of Public Safety intelligence division investigated him as a potential terrorist who might fly his passenger-loaded airplane into such a plant. The First Unitarian Church of Dallas hosted talks by a gay-rights group and was labeled by DPS intelligence as the "sponsor of radical-left groups." advertisement The manager of a West Texas Chamber of Commerce announced that he would challenge the House Appropriations Committee chairman's re-election. The man immediately lost his job, and the DPS created a dossier on him and his wife that was circulated at the Capitol. The DPS at the time was building a massive intelligence computer database on Texas residents that would be shared among law enforcement agencies. Then-Gov. Dolph Briscoe put a halt to it, saying it appeared to lack safeguards against an invasion of privacy. All of that occurred in 1974 and embarrassed the DPS nationally. The agency destroyed the intelligence files and apologized to the Dallas church. But now the scandal is all but forgotten, and some civil libertarians fear that it could be repeated. In the current world of terrorist threats, the Legislature this year expanded police surveillance powers and declined to put tighter controls on an intelligence computer database being built at the insistence of Gov. Rick Perry's office. Political aspect Two-thirds of the House voted to remove management of the computer from Perry's staff and give it entirely to DPS, but the measure was not part of the final border security law, Senate Bill 11, signed by the governor. Civil libertarians remain concerned that the database will be misused in the future, particularly if managed by a political office such as a governor's. "I do not take lightly the issue of backpack nuclear bombs. So we need to do a better job," said state Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, an opponent of the new database. "But the over-reach we're seeing here is phenomenal." Perry's director of homeland security, Steve McCraw — the driving force behind the Texas Data Exchange (TDEx) computer — declined to be interviewed. Perry spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger said the computer is meant to be nothing more than a centralized system to allow law enforcement agencies across Texas to share data that already is being kept by individual police and sheriff's departments. "It really is just a fundamental 9-11 Commission finding that law enforcement needs to share information at the state and local level and federal level. This allows that information sharing," Cesinger said. The computer is located at DPS but is managed by personnel under McCraw in the governor's division of emergency management. The database is kept by a private company, Apriss Inc., on a computer in Kentucky. "We continue to be deeply concerned about the governor's office having a hand in TDEx and the database being outside the state of Texas," said Rebecca Bernhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. Looking at the past Rep. Burnam said he was a legislative aide at the Capitol in the 1970s when the DPS intelligence scandal broke. He said there is no reason to believe at the moment that intelligence data is being misused but that it is something that should concern people. Burnam said opponents to Perry's Trans-Texas Corridor toll road system could find themselves under investigation like the airline pilot who was seen as a potential terrorist because of his political activity. Former state Sen. A.R. "Babe" Schwartz, D-Galveston, led the investigation into DPS intelligence gathering. In a recent interview, Schwartz said the pilot's case was far from the only one. "They have a vast repertoire of records on citizens," Schwartz said. "They collected pure hearsay. They collected accounts from people who wanted to defame other people." One of the dossiers kept by DPS was on a former three-term Texas House member from Houston, Curtis Graves. The information was gathered from anonymous sources and included a list of people he sang with while drinking in a Houston tavern. At the time of the scandal, DPS was preparing to build an interagency computer file on Texas residents. Briscoe said he was afraid it would contain noncriminal material that should not be housed in a database without residents' consent. "Where it's necessary to get the consent of anyone involved, and I think that's proper, I rather doubt it's practical," Briscoe said. Needed tool The Congressional Research Service earlier this summer prepared a report to Congress on anti-terrorism efforts at state law enforcement "fusion centers," including the one run by DPS. A focus of the report was on computer systems such as TDEx used by the fusion centers to connect the dots in criminal activity. The report said such computers represent "state police intelligence units on steroids" and said they take a more "proactive approach to law enforcement." It noted a variety of terrorist plots that had been foiled by interagency cooperation. But the report also said protecting civil liberties may be a major problem with such intelligence gathering. It quoted National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell as saying, "The intelligence community has an obligation to better identify and counter threats to Americans while still safeguarding their privacy. The task is inherently a difficult one." Cesinger, Perry's spokeswoman, said the governor is not concerned about potential misuse of the state databases because he believes law enforcement will use it properly. "Our law enforcement officials are reasonable and rational, and collecting information should be seen as a positive thing," Cesinger said. "Sharing this information will maximize the knowledge of our law enforcement officers who are trying to protect public safety."
Poster Comment: One huge load of Big Brother Crap ... what's going on Texas ?
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#1. To: All (#0)
These assholes want to crawl up our butts 24/7 while they leave the border wide open, harbor illegals, and impose an international corridor. Is anyone watching these traitors or keeping a data base on them and their colluding brethern?
"The mighty are only mighty because we are on our knees. Let us rise!" --Camille Desmoulins
FOLKS IF YOU DON;T LOCK AND LOAD NOW...AND USE IT!!! THEN ITS TOO LATE. ITS TIME TO DIE FOR OUR COUNTRY AND TAKE AS MANY TRAITORS AS POSSIBLE WITH US,
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition you got it right
"The mighty are only mighty because we are on our knees. Let us rise!" --Camille Desmoulins
from my cold dead hands...and theirs....LOL
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition The enemy R us....been that way for 400 years...devils just coming out of the closet now. can i park this here...don't know if someone has posted it...and my computer is groaning under the weight of 162 windows..... Bush Restricts Travel Of More Than 100k Americans Tuesday, 4 September 2007, 10:41 am Column: Sherwood Ross "...The freedom to travel of more than 100,000 Americans placed on "watch" and "no fly" lists is being restricted by the Bush-Cheney regime. Citizens who have done no more than criticize the president are being banned from airline flights, harassed at airports', strip searched, roughed up and even imprisoned, feminist author and political activist Naomi Wolf reports in her new book, "The End of America."(Chelsea Green Publishing). "Making it more difficult for people out of favor with the state to travel back and forth across borders is a classic part of the fascist playbook," Wolf says. She noticed starting in 2002 that "almost every time I sought to board a domestic airline flight, I was called aside by the Transportation Security Administration(TSA) and given a more thorough search." During one preboarding search, a TSA agent told her "You're on the list" and Wolf learned it is not a list of suspected terrorists but of journalists, academics, activists, and politicians "who have criticized the White House."...." :...Chaplain James Yee, an American citizen born in New Jersey who had converted to Islam and had the Christian compassion to call for better treatment of Guantanamo prisoners, was nabbed in Sept., 2003 on suspicion of "espionage and possibly treason" and flung into the Naval brig at Charleston, S.C., where he was manacled, put in solitary for 76 days, forbidden mail and family visits, demonized in the media and warned he could face execution. Wolf writes, "Within six months, the U.S. government had dropped all criminal charges against Yee," claiming it did so to avoid making sensitive evidence public, not because the chaplain was innocent. Over and again, the Bush gang claims it can prove terrible crimes about suspects but, like the men imprisoned at Guantanamo, it repeatedly turns out to have "conspiracy" zilch in its briefcase rather than hard proof of actual misdeeds. Yet it goes on punishing hundreds of suspects with solitary confinement and worse without ever bringing them to trial. Globally, the number of such detainees is in the tens of thousands. Stalin would have understood. Apparently, favorite targets of the Bush tyranny are peace activists like Jan Adams and Rebecca Gordon, detained at the San Francisco airport; a political leader such as Nancy Oden, of the Green Party, prevented from flying from Maine to Chicago; King Downing and David Fathi, both of the American Civil Liberties Union and both detained (proves ACLU's case about Bush, eh what?); and Constitutional scholar Walter F. Murphy, of Princeton University, who had attacked the illegalities of the Bush regime. He was put on notice his luggage would be ransacked. "When you are physically detained by armed agents because of something you said or wrote, it has an impact," Wolf writes. "…you get it right away that the state is tracking your journeys, can redirect you physically, and can have armed men and women, who may or may not answer your questions, search and release you." Wolf traces the "watch list" back to a 2003 directive from Bush to his intelligence agencies to identify people "thought to have terrorist intentions or contacts." After the list was given to the airlines, CBS-TV's 60 Minutes got a copy. The list was 540 pages long and there were 75,000 names on it of people to be taken aside for extra screening. The more stringent "no fly" list has 45,000 names on it, Wolf reports. Prior to 9/11, the list had just 16 names, but 44,984 suspects were quickly manufactured to justify the creation of the vast airport security apparatus at God knows what cost to American taxpayers....." http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0709/S00044.htm [thank you, now i can get rid of one window.]
#2. To: noone222 (#0)
"There is no 'legitimate' Corporation by virtue of it's very legal definition and purpose."
-- IndieTx
#3. To: IndieTX (#2)
#4. To: noone222 (#3)
"There is no 'legitimate' Corporation by virtue of it's very legal definition and purpose."
-- IndieTx
#5. To: noone222 (#0)
(Edited)
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