--- Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 11:09:17 -0800 From: Donna Wentworth <donna@private> To: declan@private Subject: Privacy Villain: NASA/Northwest redux Hi Declan, I thought you and the Politech list would be interested to know that EFF has a current action alert on this, in which we call for a Congressional investigation and hearings on the reportedly common, "ad hoc" transfer of passengers' private information from the airlines to the government. We also call for the suspension of all "live" testing of CAPPS II. The airlines and the government cannot be allowed to continue using people as guinea pigs for the system until we have answers about who has gained access to our private information and why. <http://action.eff.org/index.asp?step=2&item=2854> Regards, Donna --- Also see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58300-2004Jan28.html Clark, the Four-Star Businessman General Parlayed Stature Into Big Income Boost as Lobbyist and Consultant By Ben White and R. Jeffrey Smith Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, January 29, 2004; Page A01 Wesley K. Clark could not keep quiet for long. The meeting with Vice President Cheney on July 16, 2002, had started with casual banter. But the retired four-star general quickly cut off the chitchat, grasping his chair and sliding it next to Cheney's. "Mr. Vice President, we know you only have a short time, and we have some very important matters to discuss," Clark said, according to a person who attended the session. "So if you don't mind, I'd like to just jump into the meeting." Cheney nodded, and Clark raced through a 10-minute summation of what Acxiom, a Little Rock firm that collects and sorts detailed consumer data on virtually every American, could do to aid the war on terrorism. Cheney digested the presentation, which focused on verifying the identities of airline passengers, then peppered Clark and Acxiom lead executive Charles D. Morgan with questions about how to use the data without infringing on consumer privacy rules. Seven months later, Acxiom won a Department of Homeland Security subcontract to help create CAPPS II, a passenger-screening database considered one of the largest surveillance programs ever devised. The government has delayed implementing CAPPS II, in part because of privacy concerns, but the contract was Clark's biggest success in his brief career as a Washington lobbyist. Clark's lobbying was one of many business activities that, by his account, boosted his income almost 20-fold in the 42 months between his resignation from the Army and the start of his presidential campaign last September. ... _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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