AP: U.S. gov't terror ratings draw outrage

[Eugene]

U.S. gov't terror ratings draw outrage

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, Associated Press Writer Sat Dec 2, 6:16 AM ET

WASHINGTON - A leader of the new Democratic Congress, business travelers and
privacy advocates expressed outrage Friday over the unannounced assignment
of terrorism risk assessments to American international travelers by a
computerized system managed from an unmarked, two-story brick building in
Northern Virginia.

Incoming Senate Judiciary Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record)
of Vermont pledged greater scrutiny of such government database-mining projects
after reading that during the past four years millions of Americans have been
evaluated without their knowledge to assess the risks that they are terrorists
or criminals.

-snip-

The Associated Press reported Thursday that Americans and foreigners crossing
U.S. borders since 2002 have been assessed by the Homeland Security Department's
computerized Automated Targeting System, or ATS.

The travelers are not allowed to see or directly challenge these risk assessments,
which the government intends to keep on file for 40 years. Some or all data in the
system can be shared with state, local and foreign governments for use in hiring,
contracting and licensing decisions. Courts and even some private contractors can
obtain some of the data under certain circumstances.

-snip-

Full article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061202/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/traveler_screening

[Target_For_Exterm]

1. They're using this to determine whether or HIRE someone?

Nice to know our government is assigning arbitrary "scores" to Americans (no doubt based more on their political affiliation than their terror risk) and then farming out the data to corporate America to keep you from getting hired.

These people really ARE Nazis.

We need to get this crap under control.

[sweetheart]

2. credit scoring

People accept credit scoring in every walk of society from housing to job gatekeepers,
but they balk at a terror score because that crosses the line.

What irony, hell yes it crosses the line, as does all scoring by private agencies who
have no business invading the privacy of individuals with the presumption of innocence.

[Union Thug]

3. Good Point. Why do people accept credit score ratings in hiring decisions

....I don't get it.

I guess people don't really believe in the right to privacy, and would much rather have a team of corporate sugar daddies ruling over them.

[sweetheart]

6. hiring decisions

There is an unwritten rule in finance, that a person with debts will steal from the
firm to make even the debts, and some banks will only hire a person with a very
clear credit score. As is also true with renting apartments, a credit score keeps
people out of certain markets by limiting renters to only those with shiny credit.

And who polices TRW to stop them from submitting false indictments, it is more
evil that the credit scores are being used to limit movement physically and economically
in our society than the terrorist scores, IMO, because the credit scoring is so
accepted as a means of prejudging people by a corporate number issued by a
public blacklist corporation without due process.

But since the public has become soft to it, the next step in using it more is only predictable.

Orwell isn't spinning in his grave, he's laughing in it.

[Target_For_Exterm]

4. Except you have a legal right to see your credit score.

You don't have a legal right to see your "terror" (political affiliation) score.

[sweetheart]

5. when you lose out on a job 'cuz of a credit score

what due process is there.. really. You can complain that its not
fair, and like discrimination, the appearance that anything was reduced
to a number can always be handwaved away by saying someone was not
'right' for the job.

The nation's framers put such care in to the right to a trial by jury,
and a functioning 4th estate, and surely the jurisdiction of the bill
of rights, in a not-insane dissonant nation, would call the credit
score an illegal invasion, and the using of such poverty-scoring,
to be transparently overseen by a public elected body.

The fact that its all done on the sly by the secrets, is no comfort,
none whatsoever given how their casual march of criminalization is
achieving such a horror society... one where we are all scored, numbered
and stripsearched, tagged and bagged by economic utility until we cease
to be of value, and then we are scored away in to the bastille.

..takes a nazi to dream up something so middle ages.