Free Republic

=============================== NEWS FROM THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY 2600 Virginia Avenue, NW, Suite 100 Washington DC 20037 World Wide Web: http://www.LP.org =============================== For release: March 6, 2003 =============================== For additional information: George Getz, Communications Director Phone 202) 333-0008 E-Mail: pressreleases@hq.LP.org =============================== Sequel to USA Patriot Act is every tyrant's dream, Libertarians say. WASHINGTON, DC -- Here's great news for everyone who supported the USA Patriot Act, Libertarians say: The Justice Department has secretly drafted follow-up legislation that would allow the government to make secret arrests, create a vast new DNA database of "suspected terrorists" and even strip Americans of their citizenship and...

Critics say Defense 'total information awareness' impractical By Shane Harris sharris@govexec.com Security advocates and technology experts threw cold water on a controversial Defense Department plan to create a new counterterrorism system that would use information technology to sniff out clues to a possible terrorist assault and identify attackers before they strike. The critics said the system, currently being researched by the Pentagon, would violate civil liberties, undermine commerce and probably wouldn’t work. Charles Peña, a policy analyst with the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, said it’s statistically unlikely that the system could predict and pre-empt attacks and also avoid targeting...

The head of the government's Total Information Awareness project, which aims to root out potential terrorists by aggregating credit-card, travel, medical, school and other records of everyone in the United States, has himself become a target of personal data profiling.

U.S. developing technology to warn of terror plots by detecting data links The United States is developing new technologies to monitor communications and alert authorities instantly to words or phrases that might reflect an insurgency plot. The Defense Department is funding a project designed to search vast quantities of data to determine links and patterns that could indicate terrorist activities. The project, called the Total Information Awareness System, seeks to develop a prototype to rapidly translate all languages, form links between current activities and future insurgency attacks and provide the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence communities with a basis for...