--- Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 15:02:28 -0500 To: declan@private From: Anne Krauss Thought this may be of interest - Wesley Clark was a lobbyist paid by Acxiom while he was a commentator for CNN and even continuing for a while after he officially became a candidate for president. Apparently, Acxiom paid Clark as part of its efforts to secure CAPPS II funds. Acxiom, based in Arkansas, is one of the country's largest data-aggregation companies. You may recall Acxiom as the company from which government contractor, Torch Concepts, purchased information regarding incomes, occupations, vehicle ownership information, number of children and Social Security numbers which was used in the infamous government funded study which came to light last September. This was the study that utilized 5 million pieces of Jet Blue passenger itinerary information and was entitled "Homeland Security -- Airline Passenger Risk Assessment." Related link: http://www.bop2004.org/bop2004/candidate.aspx?cid=12&act=bio Excerpt ...Clark has been lobbying for the firm since January 2, 2002; Acxiom has paid more than $830,000 for Clark to advance its agenda and meet with government officials. Clark also serves on the company's board of directors. According to federal disclosure records, Clark lobbied directly on "information transfers, airline security and homeland security issues," for Acxiom, which sought funding to do controversial informational background checks on passengers for airlines... Clark lobbied the Department of Justice, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Transportation for the company. Clark also reported, on his lobbyist disclosure forms, that he promoted Acxiom to the Senate and the executive office of the president. According an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette report, he even met personally with Vice President Richard Cheney. He also made a pitch for the kind of tracking that the company's wares can perform while acting as a commentator on CNN... Anne Krauss _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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