http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=16224&c=207
Combatting The Surveillance Industrial Complex
The U.S. security establishment is rapidly increasing its ability to monitor
average Americans by hiring or compelling private-sector corporations to
provide billions of customer records. The explosive growth in surveillance
by government and business is creating a "Surveillance Industrial Complex"
that threatens all of our privacy.
About the Report:
This report makes the case that, across a broad variety of areas, the same
dynamic of the "privatization of surveillance" is underway. Different
dimensions of this trend are examined in depth in four separate sections of
the report:
* �Recruiting Individuals.� Documents how individuals are being
recruited to serve as �eyes and ears� for the authorities even after
Congress rejected the infamous TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention
System) program that would have recruited workers like cable repairmen to
spy on their customers.
* �Recruiting Companies.� Examines how companies are pressured to
voluntarily provide consumer information to the government; the many ways
security agencies can force companies to turn over sensitive information
under federal laws such as the Patriot Act; how the government is forcing
companies to participate in watchlist programs and in systems for the
automatic scrutiny of individuals� financial transactions.
* �Mass Data Use, Public and Private.� Focuses on the government�s use
of private data on a mass scale, either through data mining programs like
the MATRIX state information-sharing program, or the purchase of information
from private-sector data aggregators.
* �Pro-Surveillance Lobbying.� Looks at the flip side of the issue: how
some companies are pushing the government to adopt surveillance technologies
and programs based on private-sector data.
http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=16224&c=207
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