States government has a long and dark history of rounding up troublemakers,
suppressing dissent, criminalizing expression, sowing suspicion, and delaying
justice."
This is a quote from No Greater Threat by C. William Michaels, a book about the rise of the national security state.(1)
ROUNDING UP CITIZENS FOR THEIR POLITICAL OPINIONS
It's been done before. In 1950, Congress passed the Internal Security Act,
establishing a new federal agency called the "Subversive Activities Control
Board." The act was designed to identify and suppress supposedly subversive
individuals and organizations.
"The chief weapon of the sea pirates was their capacity to astonish. No one
could believe, until it was much too late, just how heartless and greedy they
were."-- Kurt Vonnegut*
current law, with obvious implications for what can happen now that the
government can obtain information about how you voted:
According to the ACLU, "Section 215 (known as the 'library records' provision,
but which actually applies to 'any tangible thing') does not require any
individualized suspicion to get a court order for any record wanted."
http://action.aclu.org/reformthepatriotact/whereitstands.html
That doesn't mean it's constitutional. And the use of certain kinds of
data-mining programs by certain departments is now supposed to require reports to Congress, though it's unclear to any of us whether anyone is following the rules, or even how we would find out if they weren't.
"The information sharing permitted by Title II of the Patriot Act is quite wide
ranging. Definitions are broadly defined, and the investigation could involve
almost anything. No court order is needed for information sharing. The Act does
not specify a limit to the use made of this information by other government
officials. The Act does not limit information sharing to more than one official
from more than one agency. Information can be "shared" by one to many. There is no limitation of the type of "official" use to be made of shared information. This opens the door to extensive and secretive sharing …" (1)
MORE ABOUT HOW VOTE TRACKING REMOVES POLITICAL PRIVACY
Is this combination vote-tracking/digital imaging system already being used?
Yes. In San Juan County, Washington the VoteHere ballot tracking system is being used with Hart Intercivic vote-counting scanners (capture digital images of the ballots). Bar codes on the ballot - VoteHere ballot tracker:
http://votehere.net/ballottrackermailin.php
Citizens to the rescue:
Tim White and Alan Rosato, two extraordinary San Juan County citizens, along
with the help of the Green Party of San Juan County, have filed a lawsuit
contending that the use of the ballot tracking program is illegal. You will find
much more information here: http://www.mindspring.com/~sjmedia/
BUT CAN THESE BALLOT IMAGES BE EFFICIENTLY CONVERTED TO DATABASE FORMATS?
Yes. The ballot images are stored in directories, which can then be run through
a program like Hursti's Votoscope to convert the pictures into data tables.
Black Box Voting obtained the ballot image files from the Diebold high speed
scanner, another voting machine that produces ballot images. (As you may recall, we used to think this was a cool feature.)
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