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From the Old Curmudgeon:

If you thought that TIPS went away because Congress said it should...visit the Neighborhood Watch Homepage

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posted by A Curmudgeon 1:56 PM

 

Deck Chairs on the Ship of State
Alan Bock - Antiwar.com
Nobody in Congress or the bureaucracy really wants to find out why the government failed so massively in any detail, because a full understanding would implicate too many people � often enough including those charged with trying to fix things. So they move the deck chairs around, congratulate themselves, feed stories to the lapdog press, and hope no small child points out the emperor�s lack of raiment. If this were simply reshuffling, Americans might not have cause for sustained outrage, even though it assures steady growth in the budgets of all these agencies � new departments generally have a honeymoon of fairly lengthy duration before they face GAO reports that are ignored by Congress. Unfortunately, the changes involved in the Homeland Security legislation are not all neutral. Somehow they managed (surprise!) to slip in provisions that increase the power of government at the expense of the liberty of the citizens, as Jefferson would have expected. The legislation also concentrates more power in the hands of the executive branch. Proponents argue this is needed to provide a swift response to terrorist threats. But without trimming and paring some of the agencies, they are likely to be at least as ineffective as before and grow more ineffective. And the more power is concentrated the less accountable it is likely to be. The legislation also further blurs the distinction between the military and civilian law enforcement. The administration wants to be able to use the military in such endeavors from time to time � as if it hadn�t already seriously overcommitted the military overseas � so it included some exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act, which drew a line between military and civilian some 125 years ago. This is incredibly dangerous and wrongheaded. It also will provide for anyone identified as a potential terrorist, or a potential associate of a potential terrorist, to be subject to surveillance, interrogation and detention � even U.S. citizens � without access to a lawyer or family members, or even any required acknowledgment that a person is being held. This kind of secret police stuff sounds like something out of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, or North Korea. But it will be the law of the land in the land of the "free."

***You would have thought that after the USA PATRIOT Act passed without our representatives bothering to read the legislation, they would have taken the time to read and discuss the implications of the language of this massive document. I think it's time we started requiring "Stupidity tests" for our representatives before they are allowed to run for office.***** But that's just this old curmudgeon's opinion.********

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posted by A Curmudgeon 1:31 PM

 

Homeland Security Is the Largest Federal Expansion in 50 Years
by Rep. Ron Paul, MD - LewRockwell.com - November 26, 2002
The administration and Congress put the finishing touches on the monstrous Homeland Security bill last week, creating the first new federal department since the Department of Defense at the end of World War II. Laughably, the new department has been characterized as merely a "reorganization" of existing agencies, even though I notice no department was abolished to make up for it! One thing we can be sure of in this world is that federal agencies grow. The Homeland Security department, like all federal agencies, will increase in size exponentially over the coming decades. Its budget, number of employees, and the scope of its mission will EXPAND. Congress has no idea what it will have created twenty or fifty years hence, when less popular presidents have the full power of a domestic spying agency at their disposal. The frightening details of the Homeland Security bill, which authorizes an unprecedented level of warrantless spying on American citizens, are still emerging. Those who still care about the Bill of Rights, particularly the 4th amendment, have every reason to be alarmed. But the process by which Congress created the bill is every bit as reprehensible as its contents. Ironically, many in Congress who usually champion limited government were enthusiastic supporters of the largest federal expansion in 50 years. Twenty years ago President Reagan revitalized conservatives across the country by appealing to their Goldwater roots, promising to slash the size of government and eliminate whole departments. Yet the promise of a smaller government went unfulfilled, and today Congress passes budgets even larger that those of the Clinton years. Of course the Homeland Security bill did receive some opposition from the President�s critics. Yet did they attack the legislation because it threatens to debase the 4th amendment and create an Orwellian surveillance society? Did they attack it because it will chill political dissent or expand the drug war? No, they attacked it on the grounds that it failed to secure enough high-paying federal union jobs, thus angering one of Washington�s most powerful special interest groups. Ultimately, however, even the most prominent critics voted for the bill.

The lesson learned from the rush to create a Homeland Security department is that the size and scope of government grows regardless of which party is in power. The federal government now devours a whopping 40% of the nation�s GDP, the highest level since World War II � and a massive new department can only make things worse. The Homeland Security bill provides a vivid example of the uncontrolled spending culture in Washington, a culture that views the true source of political power � your tax dollars � as unlimited.

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posted by A Curmudgeon 12:45 PM

 

Ashcroft's Shadowy Disciple
Nat Hentoff - The Village Voice - November 15th, 2002
The government [under the USA Patriot Act] can use [its powers] on people who aren't suspected of committing a crime. Innocent people can be deprived of any clue that they are being watched and that they may need to defend themselves. �Lincoln Caplan, editor, Legal Affairs ("A Magazine of Yale Law School"), November-December 2002

In covering the highly visible and contentious midterm national elections, the press, in all its manifestations, totally ignored the Bush administration's ceaseless attacks on the Bill of Rights, orchestrated by Attorney General John Ashcroft. So did the candidates, editorial writers, and commentators. This silence on the deterioration of the liberties we are fighting to protect gives Ashcroft all the more encouragement to pursue his plans, as reported in the October 21 Legal Times, to prepare "a second round of counterterrorism legislation. . . . Lawmakers could see a draft bill in January, after the new Congress convenes"�with the Republicans in control, and most Democratic leaders silent accomplices of Ashcroft. Across the country, the 94 United States Attorneys were charged in an October 1 speech by the attorney general to vigorously enforce the USA Patriot Act and others of his sorties against civil liberties. In front of his troops, Ashcroft accused his critics of "capitulating before freedom's enemies�the terrorists." These dissenters, he added indignantly, have been subjecting his methods to "disdain and ridicule." By contrast, a staunch patriot, by Ashcroft's definition, is George Pataki.

How many New Yorkers know that on September 16, the governor took time from campaigning to announce, by executive order, the start of a new toll-free Statewide Public Security Tips Hot Line that, Pataki assures us, "will enable citizens from throughout the state to report information about suspected terrorist activity." This is Pataki's version of John Ashcroft's Operation TIPS, which House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a conservative Republican libertarian, struck out of the still-pending bill to create a Department of Homeland Security. Armey insisted that the government should not be encouraging Americans to spy on one another. Pataki, who has been tone-deaf to civil liberties throughout his terms as governor, has no such compunctions�a point Carl McCall might have mentioned. Because press coverage of this state's very own Operation Tips has been minimal, I am grateful to Bob Perry, legislative counsel for the New York Civil Liberties Union, for information on the scope of this dangerous Ashcroftean plan to create watch committees, in neighborhoods and elsewhere, that will report their suspicions not only to the state hot line but also to the New York Police Department's hot line. Keep in mind that all these tips on "suspicious or unusual activity . . . will be cross-referenced through federal, state and local databases," says the Pataki press release. There is no indication that false tips will eventually be erased from those multiple, intersecting databases.

In 1984, George Orwell predicted the Ashcrofts and Patakis to come: "There of course was no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment."

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posted by A Curmudgeon 7:14 AM

 

All You Democrats
By L. Neil Smith - Sierra Times

I can't remember ever writing an essay like this, directed to Democrats, whom I've always pretty much regarded as a lost cause, at least as far as the values that I treasure are concerned. I've written rather a lot for the benefit of Republicans, because I used to believe that there was something there that might be salvaged. However in the time that's passed since September 11, 2001, I've learned that I was wrong.

It's time for what was once fashionably termed a "paradigm shift", and the paradigm that needs to shift is yours. You made this mess we live in today, and justice demands that you do something now to unmake it. The alternative is a future too terrible to contemplate, a future of "Homeland Security" (an open confession of pure fascist intent if I've ever heard one), a future of slavery and terror and torture and death.

It's intriguingly symmetrical that the Stupid Party thinks everyone is evil, and the Evil Party thinks everyone is stupid. We need a party that believes that we are neither stupid nor evil.

Let's begin by writing and introducing an "Emergency Restoration Act" in Congress, designed to do two things. First, it would return the relative size and scope of government in America to what it was, say, in 1912, before the Federal Reserve Act and the Income Tax allowed it to begin a surge of growth that can only be referred to as cancerous. Any law passed after 1912 would be reexamined. Unless it won the support of 99% of both houses of Congress, that would be the end of it. Finally, there would be a 100-year-long Moratorium on the passage of any laws at any level of government, during which the human race would blossom as never before in its history, and reach out to the stars.

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posted by A Curmudgeon 9:48 AM

 

The New Iron Curtain by Scott Bieser

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posted by A Curmudgeon 9:37 AM

 

Regarding TIAS, you have to wonder how a convicted felon got the level of security clearance required by DARPA? When I was "playing the game", that was always a show-stopper. But, that's just this old curmudgeon's opinion.

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posted by A Curmudgeon 1:38 PM

 

US gov's 'ultimate database' run by a felon
By Thomas C Greene in Washington - Posted: 14/11/2002 at 20:22 GMT
We all know that truth is stranger than fiction, and here we have an apparently real item straight from the realm of Tom Clancy. Imagine a huge, absolutely huge, central database containing both the official and commercial data of every single citizen, run by the US military ostensibly for anti-terror and Homeland Security purposes, and all of it under the direction of a convicted felon.

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posted by A Curmudgeon 1:17 PM

 

Council: Patriot Act goes too far
San Jose Mercury News 11/14/02: Ken McLaughlin
Contending that the USA Patriot Act represents an unwarranted assault on civil rights, the Santa Cruz City Council on Tuesday unanimously passed a resolution urging the federal government to rescind parts of the law. Congress overwhelmingly passed the anti-terrorism legislation after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, making it easier for police to eavesdrop on phone conversations, seize voice messages, track e-mail and obtain certain confidential records. Civil rights activist Valerie Lasciak said Santa Cruz became the 14th city in the country to take similar action. Most of the cities are college towns such as Berkeley and Cambridge, Mass., but Denver's city council has also condemned the law. ``The only thing that surprises me is that it took us so long to do this,'' said Vice Mayor Emily Reilly.

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posted by A Curmudgeon 12:24 PM

 

Total Information Awareness (TIA) System
Program Manager: Dr. John Poindexter
Deputy PM: Dr. Robert Popp



Program Objective:
The Total Information Awareness (TIA) program is a FY02 new-start program. The goal of the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program is to revolutionize the ability of the United States to detect, classify and identify foreign terrorists � and decipher their plans � and thereby enable the U.S. to take timely action to successfully preempt and defeat terrorist acts. To that end, the TIA program objective is to create a counter-terrorism information system that: (1) increases information coverage by an order of magnitude, and affords easy future scaling; (2) provides focused warnings within an hour after a triggering event occurs or an evidence threshold is passed; (3) can automatically queue analysts based on partial pattern matches and has patterns that cover 90% of all previously known foreign terrorist attacks; and, (4) supports collaboration, analytical reasoning and information sharing so that analysts can hypothesize, test and propose theories and mitigating strategies about possible futures, so decision-makers can effectively evaluate the impact of current or future policies and prospective courses of action.

Program Strategy:
The TIA program strategy is to integrate technologies developed by DARPA (and elsewhere as appropriate) into a series of increasingly powerful prototype systems that can be stress-tested in operationally relevant environments, using real-time feedback to refine concepts of operation and performance requirements down to the component level. The TIA program will develop and integrate information technologies into fully functional, leave-behind prototypes that are reliable, easy to install, and packaged with documentation and source code (though not necessarily complete in terms of desired features) that will enable the intelligence community to evaluate new technologies through experimentation, and rapidly transition it to operational use, as appropriate. Accordingly, the TIA program will work in close collaboration with one or more U.S. intelligence agencies that will provide operational guidance and technology evaluation, and act as TIA system transition partners.

Technically, the TIA program is focusing on the development of: 1) architectures for a large-scale counter-terrorism database, for system elements associated with database population, and for integrating algorithms and mixed-initiative analytical tools; 2) novel methods for populating the database from existing sources, create innovative new sources, and invent new algorithms for mining, combining, and refining information for subsequent inclusion into the database; and, 3) revolutionary new models, algorithms, methods, tools, and techniques for analyzing and correlating information in the database to derive actionable intelligence.

*****Since things have a habit of disappearing from government sites, I captured the entire page as it exists today. Interesting eh? Funny how they neglect to talk about the domestic issues/uses.****

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posted by A Curmudgeon 9:50 AM

 

You Are a Suspect
Commentary By WILLIAM SAFIRE
WASHINGTON � If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you:
Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend � all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database." To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you � passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance � and you have the supersnoop's dream: a "Total Information Awareness" about every U.S. citizen. This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario. It is what will happen to your personal freedom in the next few weeks if John Poindexter gets the unprecedented power he seeks. Remember Poindexter? Brilliant man, first in his class at the Naval Academy, later earned a doctorate in physics, rose to national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan. He had this brilliant idea of secretly selling missiles to Iran to pay ransom for hostages, and with the illicit proceeds to illegally support contras in Nicaragua. A jury convicted Poindexter in 1990 on five felony counts of misleading Congress and making false statements, but an appeals court overturned the verdict because Congress had given him immunity for his testimony. He famously asserted, "The buck stops here," arguing that the White House staff, and not the president, was responsible for fateful decisions that might prove embarrassing.

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posted by A Curmudgeon 7:27 AM

 

Big Brother at the library
By MARK SOMMER - Buffalo News Staff Reporter
Silence is golden to librarians and booksellers. Being muzzled by a gag order isn't.
That's one of several concerns librarians have with a provision in the USA Patriot Act, passed by Congress last year in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It gives the FBI authority to search library and bookstore circulation records and, where applicable, Internet user records, in an investigation of international terrorism or for other intelligence probes. Unlike most search warrants, the FBI doesn't have to show evidence of wrongdoing or that the target of its investigation is involved in terrorism. Instead, the agent must only claim he believes the records he wants may be related to an ongoing investigation. The streamlined process and lower threshold of suspected guilt were passed to allow the bureau to respond more quickly to terrorist threats. "It's a First Amendment issue and privacy issue versus being a good citizen and wanting to help. It's really tough to walk that fine line," said Diane Chrisman, director of the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library system. One year after passage of the act, the Big Brother concerns of civil libertarians appear to be hypothetical. Or are they? It's hard to say for sure, since everything is shrouded in secrecy. Under the USA Patriot Act, librarians and booksellers served with a court order are prohibited from disclosing, under threat of prosecution, whether an FBI warrant was served or records were released. Then again, they probably wouldn't know anyway, because, according to Paul Moskal, a spokesman for the FBI's Buffalo field office, electronic surveillance is typically done off site, without anyone else's knowledge.

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posted by A Curmudgeon 9:47 AM

 

When I think of veterans... A Tribute on Veterans Day
By Angel Shamaya - Founder/Executive Director KeepAndBearArms.com
When I think of veterans...
I think of my friend who was wounded in Vietnam. He may not have wanted to go, but his country called him, and he went -- and faced atrocities that make Hollywood movies look tame. Men died in his arms and left their last wishes in his breaking heart. He came home and was spit on by liberal democrats. He works for freedom to this day. I think of my neighbor who flew choppers in Nam. He'd spend 12 sweaty hours a day getting supplies to ground troops in hot zones, often under fire, try to sleep, and get up and do it again. He buried friends who knew a kind of love only a combat veteran will ever know. When he meets fellow vets who survived the same conflict, they have an instant bond that requires no words. I think of my friend who spent years at sea, in and out of hostile ports, while his newborn son grew up far away from his loving eyes and arms. I think of a member of our gun rights organization stationed halfway around the world who said he joined because he wants some rights to come home to.

Being a veteran is ultimately about defending freedom, and freedom is ultimately about rights. In the war being waged against rights in America, there are many who labor and toil to defend our most sacred of rights: the right to defend ourselves, our families, our communities, and, if need be, our very liberties. The last word on liberty's defense was enshrined in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights. Let us pray we use our First Amendment rights so effectively as to never have to resort to the Second -- but let us remember why the Second was really put in place. And let Liberty's Enemies remember it, too.

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posted by A Curmudgeon 4:11 AM

 

Florida protesters sue over arrests at Bush rally
By The Associated Press - 11.07.02
TAMPA, Fla. � Three protesters have sued this city and its police chief over their arrest during a visit to Legends Field by President Bush and Gov. Jeb Bush. A document prepared by American Civil Liberties Union lawyers said Janis Lentz, 56, of Tampa, Sonja Haught, 61, of Clearwater, and Mauricio Rosas, 38, of Tampa, had their free-speech rights violated and were unlawfully arrested at the public Bush rally on June 4, 2001. According to the complaint, the three took signs to the event calling for an investigation of the 2000 presidential election and reading "June is Gay Pride Month." Police told them to put away the signs or leave. When they refused and asked the officers why people with pro-Bush signs were allowed to stay, they were handcuffed and forcefully removed from the grounds. "What police did was injure me for having a political statement that was not in tune with the current administration," said Rosas, a gay activist. "We had a right to be there to protest in a peaceful and respectful way." Rosas said he was dragged down two flights of stairs and left with scars. Haught and Lentz said they were bruised. Charges of disorderly conduct and trespassing against Haught were later dismissed, as was a charge of trespassing against Lentz. The suit, filed Nov. 1, seeks unspecified damages and fewer restrictions on protest zones in the city. Tampa police did not return a message left at their press office for this article.

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posted by A Curmudgeon 11:12 AM

 

US may set up MI5-style spy agency in security shake-up
By Toby Harnden in Washington - Filed: 31/10/2002

America is contemplating a radical overall of the FBI and the creation of a domestic spying organisation modelled on Britain's MI5, according to US intelligence sources. Tom Ridge, President George W Bush's director of homeland security, will hold talks in London next week focusing on the British experience of combating the IRA over more than three decades. He is due to meet Eliza Manningham-Buller, director of MI5, and Sir Richard Dearlove, the MI6 chief, known as "C", as well as David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, and senior police officers at Scotland Yard. Officials from the Senate Intelligence Committee have already flown to London for talks with British security officials. "We have just generically taken a look at and will be looking at your domestic intelligence operation, your MI5. The FBI is the counterpart here. There are some practical lessons learned," Mr Ridge said in an interview. "We'll take a look at your anti-terrorism legislation - what you can and cannot do in relationship to people you suspect of terrorism. It's really a matter of a fairly systematic review of how you go about addressing the problem." Following the intelligence slips that failed to raise the alarm before the September 11 attacks, deep misgivings have grown in Washington about the FBI and CIA's ability to prevent future terrorist outrages. Senior Bush administration officials believe that the FBI's focus on law enforcement to the detriment of domestic intelligence-gathering has been a fatal flaw in America's defences against terrorism.

****I feel safer already****

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posted by A Curmudgeon 6:42 AM

 

U.S.: OSCE To Send Observers For First Time To Monitor Florida Elections
By Roland Eggleston

The United States has taken the unusual step of inviting the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to monitor an election in one of its states. The OSCE usually concentrates on elections in postcommunist countries. A spokesman says the request came from the U.S. government. The team will monitor the 5 November congressional elections in the state of Florida, where problems in 2000 delayed the election of President George W. Bush for five weeks.

Munich, 22 October 2002 (RFE/RL) -- The Florida poll will be monitored by a team of experts from the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, which normally watches elections in the former Soviet Union and other postcommunist countries to assess whether they meet OSCE standards for democracy. OSCE monitors have frequently criticized elections for failing to meet democratic standards on such matters as the registration of voters or by imposing restrictions on the rights of political parties and voters. It is the first time the OSCE has monitored an election in the United States. An OSCE spokesman, Jens-Hagen Eschenbacher, told RFE/RL that the monitoring mission was requested by the U.S. government. He says it will focus on whether U.S. authorities have rectified problems with vote-counting in Florida, which caused a delay in the election of President George W. Bush in 2000. There were also irregularities in a gubernatorial primary election in Florida last month. Eschenbacher told RFE/RL: "We will send an assessment team of seven election experts to the U.S. They will go to Washington and Florida, and they will conduct an assessment of the elections in Florida with a focus on evaluation of the actions the authorities have undertaken to remedy the problems that were observed during the 2000 elections."

Questions have been raised about the efficiency of the voting machines in Florida, a lack of knowledge by poll workers, and the validity of absentee and military votes.

Related article:
Who makes the vote-counting machines?

This is an article about just three things: disclosure, conflict of interest and potential for manipulation. It is not a conspiracy theory or a political point of view. I think you'll agree with me: We don't care who wins the election, as long as it's who was VOTED FOR. If we lose confidence in our voting system, it won't matter what we think about any issue. Voting won't matter. Democracy won't matter. A lethal combination: Three nasty little guys that don't belong anywhere near our voting system keep showing up at the polls. Their names are Nondisclosure, Conflict of Interest, and Potential for Manipulation.

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posted by A Curmudgeon 7:04 AM

 

Commentary

Majority vote does not change wrong into right
by Kurt T. Weber - October 29, 2002

A sign in a government community center reads, "Exercise your freedom and vote!" This exhortation may sound good, but it should cause one to pause and ask: Is freedom really about voting? Cato Institute president Ed Crane once remarked that the people in Poland, China, and other such places did not, and do not, rebel against oppression just so they can vote. Rather, they risk their lives to be free to live without government directing their lives. They were not national resources to be exploited to achieve someone else's societal goal. Unfortunately, the whittling away of liberty in Oregon and across the United States has become acceptable-so long as a majority approves it. Whether that majority is citizens, local officials, the legislature, or Congress, 50 percent plus one justifies almost everything these days.

Majority rule does not change wrong into right. If the majority of Oregonians voted tomorrow to bring back slavery, it would still be wrong. These United States were founded as a Republic with a constitutionally limited government. Roger Pilon, director of the Cato Institute's Center for Constitutional Studies, points out, Article I, section 8 of the U.S. Constitution and the Tenth Amendment of the Bill of Rights succinctly spell out the limits to government power.

Alchemists believe you can turn lead into gold. However, believing something does not make it true. Whenever you cast a vote in a government election remember, majority support does not change a wrong into right.

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posted by A Curmudgeon 9:27 AM

 

More Surveillance on the Way
Robin Mejia - The Nation

The USA Patriot Act was passed with much fanfare last October, but it was soon clear that lawmakers passed the package without examining all the parts. Today, we're still struggling to determine how new law enforcement powers granted by Patriot are being used. In June, the House Judiciary Committee asked the Attorney General for specifics on this issue. On October 17, the committee released the DOJ's answers.

Much of what was learned was troubling. For example, Patriot opened loopholes that let electronic communications service providers give customer records to law enforcement officials without a warrant. In lay terms, the folks that provide your email account are an electronic service provider, and your actual emails could fall into the category of customer records.

In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, the Attorney General's office confirmed that they have received anecdotal accounts of providers turning over records without a warrant but "there are no statistics detailing the number of times that disclosures have occurred or the basis for such disclosures." In this context, a recent amendment to the Senate's Homeland Security bill seems all the more ominous. The amendment, offered by Orrin Hatch, was based on a bill passed in the House on July 15 just before the August recess called the Cyber Security Enhancement Act, or CSEA. Introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith, who brought us Patriot's computer surveillance language, CSEA, if passed, would make it even easier for government agents to get your electronic records, without a warrant and without telling you.

Traditionally getting electronic records, which can include your actual emails, has required a warrant, and companies that handed over such information without that warrant could face penalties. The Patriot Act created an exception to that requirement: communications providers can now voluntarily disclose customer records to law enforcement officials in situations where the provider has a reasonable belief that disclosing the records is necessary to prevent an imminent danger. The language in Hatch's amendment expands that exception in two ways. First, it removes the imminence requirement. Under the new rules, a provider would only have to believe that disclosing the records would help prevent some theoretical future danger. Second, a provider would no longer need to have a reasonable belief that the communication relates to this vaguely defined danger. He or she will only have to be acting in good faith.

Additionally, while the Patriot Act granted exemptions specifically to law enforcement operatives, the new rules would allow communications providers to turn over records to any government agency. While it's at least conceivable that the Centers for Disease Control might have a valid need for your records, the way the bill is worded, your local city council would have the same standing.

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posted by A Curmudgeon 8:44 AM