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Defend Your Right to Privacy
Recent news reports have revealed the development of a new federal program dubbed "Total Information Awareness." The program will create a computer system that will search through a vast centralized database that contains information about your purchases, your medical history, your school records, and more. Help stop this domestic spying program.
Dear [ Decision Maker ] , I am writing to ask that you renounce and take all action necessary to terminate the new Defense Department "Total Information Awareness" program that would provide government officials with the ability to snoop into all aspects of our private lives without a search warrant or proof of criminal wrongdoing. Recent media reports have said that the Pentagon's new Office of Information Awareness is building a system called "Total Information Awareness." This computer system would effectively provide government officials with immediate access to our personal information: all of our communications (phone calls, emails and web searches), financial records, purchases, prescriptions, school records, medical records and travel history. Under this program, our entire lives would be catalogued and available to government officials. I find it disgraceful that there are government officials who think that they should treat all Americans as though they are suspects and therefore "fair game" for government snooping and spying. I believe that the principles enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights sought to protect my privacy rights and I do not believe that bureaucrats in Washington should have the most intimate details of my life available on their computers to be pawed through at their whim. I fully appreciate that the government may need to intrusively investigate specific individuals who may be planning to do us harm. Our current legal system provides the ability for such investigation to occur within judicial constraints. I also believe that rather than seeking to investigate some 270 million Americans, law enforcement officials should instead be focusing on the small number of people who are real suspects. I hope that you will take immediate action to terminate the "Total Information Awareness" Program and look forward to receiving your response. Sincerely,
Sincerely, |
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| Background Information |
In the last week, media reports have revealed that a little-known Defense Department office is developing a computer system that would provide government officials with the ability to snoop into all aspects of our private lives without a search warrant.
The Pentagon's new Office of Information Awareness is building a system called "Total Information Awareness" that would effectively provide government officials with immediate access to our personal information: all of our communications (phone calls, emails and web searches), financial records, purchases, prescriptions, school records, medical records and travel history. Under this program, our entire lives would be catalogued and available to government officials.
Leading this initiative is John Poindexter, the former Reagan era National Security Adviser who famously said that it was his duty to withhold information from Congress. In his new post as Head of the Pentagon Office of Information Awareness, Poindexter has been quietly promoting the idea of creating "a virtual centralized database" that would have the "data-mining" power to pry into the most minute and intimate details of our private lives.
The Logo of the New Information Awareness Program:
While the promoters of this Orwellian program have argued that such snooping should be accepted as part of the "War on Terrorism," it is clear that this proposal goes too far. While running for the presidency, George W. Bush said that he wanted to defend individual privacy. Yet the Defense Department program makes a mockery of such privacy protections and threatens to bulldoze the judicial and Congressional restraints that have protected the public against domestic spying.
You can stop this program now! TAKE ACTION by sending a free fax to President Bush asking that he renounce and end this new effort to invade our privacy.
Law-abiding people should be protected from government snooping. It has been a hallmark of American democracy that our individual privacy is protected against government intervention and snooping as long as we are not guilty of wrongdoing.
This new system would obliterate these protections -- the government would simply collect data on everyone so as to be able to investigate any one of us if and when they so decide to do so. Doing so would make us all suspects and in effect eliminate our personal privacy.
In searching for terrorists, we must not investigate everyone. It has been suggested that searching for terrorists in our midst is like looking for a needle in a haystack. If this is true, then it certainly makes no sense to make the haystack even bigger by creating the means to investigate hundreds of millions of law-abiding Americans rather than focusing in on real suspects.
We must not sacrifice our freedom and liberty in order to prosecute the "War on Terrorism." As Americans, we have every right to be proud of our constitutional rights and freedoms. And in being proud of these rights, we must make every effort to promote and enlarge our privacy rather then sacrifice it in a time of anxiety and concern.
