Sunday, January 19, 2003

Politically Tonedef? or dumb as a fox? Poindexter's Still a Technocrat, Still a Lightning Rod. The pursuit of a technological solution to the nation's military challenges is nothing new for Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter nor is the attending controversy. By John Markoff. [New York Times: Business] Poindexter is noted in the article as saying that critics of the Total Information Awareness project are distorting the aims.  He says the system will only seek patterns identifying potential threats to the US and will not create a huge datawarehouse of our personal information. Yeah right.  This is the guy that did not understand the laws that a) said no one could sell arms to the rebels in Nicaragua, b) dealing with drug dealers is illegal and c) military arms were not to be traded to Iran. But, lets assume he is right.  What is to prevent someone from tuning his new found "radar" to look for patterns of "political" behavior that oppose the party in power.  What then? Here is a man smart enough to get a "get out of jail free" card from a Congress that wanted to hang him from the highest tree.  Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, never...   9:05:44 PM