A former technology manager at a major telecommunications firm who, for obvious reasons, asks not to be identified, says companies have been storing information on calling patterns since the Sept. 11 attacks, and giving it to the federal government.
"We have a police state far beyond anything George Orwell imagined in his book 1984," says privacy expert Susan Morrissey. "The everyday lives of virtually every American are under scrutiny 24-hours-a-day by the government." Paul Hawken, owner of the data information mining company Groxis, agrees, saying the government is spending more time watching ordinary Americans than chasing terrorists and the bad news is that they aren't very good at it. "It's the Three Stooges go to data mining school," Hawken says. "Even worse, DARPA is depending on second-rate companies to provide them with the technology, which only increases the chances for errors." |