[Seattle-editorial] Feature Proposal: Homeland Insecurities

[Jeremy Kahn]

Amber put this together and has asked me to look it over and forward it to
you. Here's what she wrote, with a few links added and a tentative title.

Hope this looks good to you all.

--jeremy

TITLE: Homeland Insecurities
<br> Subhead: Ministry of Privacy in the works
<br> <br>

On November 19, the U.S. Senate <a
href="http://portland.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=34788&group=webcast">passed the
Homeland Security Act</a> (H.R.5005) 90 to 9, a <a
href="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:HR5005:">nearly-500-page document</a>
that Senators had received only a bit over a week before the vote.

<br> Democrats did not challenge a frightening, if <a
href="http://commondreams.org/views02/1125-06.htm">disappointingly unsurprising</a>,
provision for the <a href="http://commondreams.org/views02/1121-03.htm">Gestapo-esque</a> <a
href="http://www.darpa.mil/iao/">Information Awareness Office</a>, an agency which has the
potential and power to <a href="http://alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14611">end
privacy</a> as we know it.  Following suit, both Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, Democratic
senators from Washington state, <a
href="http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=107&session=2&vote=00249">voted
in favor</a> of the Homeland Security Act.  Far from being a new development, the
Information Awareness Office (IAO), headed by John Poindexter (Iran-contra convicted felon),
was quietly announced as early as <a
href="http://www.justiceonline.org/webdocs/info_office.html">February 2002</a>.

<br> In addition, the bill gives the President power to <a
href="http://commondreams.org/views02/1121-07.htm">deny collective bargaining rights</a> to
the estimated 170,000 federal workers who will soon be employed by the Department of
Homeland Security.

<br> Resistance efforts on the local level have sprung up as at least 15 city governments,
most recently <a
href="http://portland.indymedia.org:8081/front.php3?article_id=35713&group=webcast">Eugene,
Oregon</a>, have passed resolutions opposing civil rights infringements encouraged by the US
Patriot Act.  Certain conservatives have also <a
href="http://portland.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=33237">voiced their opposition</a>
to the IAO's plans for massive invasion of privacy.  Other <a
href="http://www.musicalpeace.org/vyoma/December%2021.htm">symbolic acts of protest</a>,
reminiscent of Buy Nothing day, are currently being organized.

<br>
More information: <a href="http://www.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/">EPIC</a> | <a
href="http://indymedia.org/archive/features/current#6119">Global Indymedia feature</a> | <a
href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/deptofhomeland/">the White House spin</a>