Free Republic

Homeland Security officials are testing a supersnoop computer system that sifts through personal information on U.S. citizens to detect possible terrorist attacks, prompting concerns from lawmakers who have called for investigations. The system uses the same data-mining process that was developed by the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness (TIA) project that was banned by Congress in 2003 because of vast privacy violations. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation of the project called ADVISE -- Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement -- was requested by Rep. David R. Obey, Wisconsin Democrat and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. The investigation focuses...

In an effort to curb the rapidly increasing health threat of diabetes in New York City, the Bloomberg administration earlier this year mandated that medical laboratories report the results of special diabetes-monitoring blood tests, along with the name and contact information of patients, to the City Department of Health. While efforts to reduce the devastating health consequences of diabetes are laudable, the violation of patient confidentiality and the precedent set by this new regulation should be the source of grave concern to all New Yorkers. Diabetes is now among the leading causes of death in the city - and its...