The Current Status of Your Personal Privacy
by Niki Friedrich Raapana, SeattleACL@hotmail.com, August 15, 2001

Since 1994, Seattle's been gathering information for a federal Pilot
Program.  Beginning with Weed & Seed in the blighted urban (HUD) areas of
Central, South, and West, the pilot program maneuvered up Aurora into
privately owned rental properties in University and Roosevelt neighborhoods.
By 2000, under new federal Police Chief Kerlikowske, the entire city became
a designated pilot site for Department of Justice's Human Subjects Research.

The purpose of the research is to find ways to gather personally
identifiable information about everyone in the community. The stated reason
for their need for more data is to identify potential addicts, to prevent
crime, and to reduce fear, and therefore obtaining individual's signed
authorization to gather and analyze personal data is no longer required.

The pilot program asks the more moral community members to identify problem
neighbors to the new community police.  The new, nicer, FBI-COPS investigate
anonymous citizen complaints. In 1999, Seattle COPS assumed authority to
enter 144 private homes without legal warrants, as members of a health team,
to gather data on life-threatening situations.

Part of COPS' innovative surveillance strategies is to have government
employees report to the data team what they see during official visits. 
Under COPS cross-training, City workers must follow the list by logging data
on "identified" signs that indicate a potential threat, reporting on
people's messy kitchens, overflowing dumpsters, dirty children, and noise.

The #1 life-threatening situation, identified in COPS' Cross-Training
Brochure, by the Seattle Police, is a marijuana growing operation.

In order to create a safer, more "civil society," the government must be
able to determine who has the potential to become a criminal, use/farm
herbs, or become a leader, and they must be able to re-educate or intervene.
  The new government rules by consensus, and they've already collectively
agreed their job is to create moral citizens, via civility laws.

Before they can help/save/incarcerate whoever "may" use drugs, first they
must find out everything they can about everyone in the community. They have
to assess and analyze the mental, emotional, and economic conditions that
predict our potential for asserting, "I control my own body and destiny." 
It's their 21st century version of just say no, to life.

The United Nations promises that by 2020 poverty will be eliminated from the
planet, sooner if governments, NGOS, and World Bank are granted total poetic
liscense to build our capacity for a "sustainable quality of life." Seattle
is cutting edge in their compliance with the communitarian agenda, proudly
testing the merging of individual data into World Bank's master files.  WB
and FBI-COPS both use HUD software to combine U.S. census records with
religious data, school records, consumer data, employment records, personal
interviews, community surveys, Department of Justice NIBR data,* and more.

*The program is called COMPASS, Community Mapping, Analysis, and Planning
for Safety Strategies. Grant #'s: 2000-IJ-CS-K001 and 2001-IJ-CX-K001.  To
find out if you are being used for "Human Subjects Research," contact The
Seattle Privacy Council: Sid Sidorowicz at the Strategic Planning Office, or
Councilmembers Judy Nicastro and Jim Compton. The Seattle Privacy Council
meets next on September 6, 2001, 10am, at the Municipal Building.  (They
haven't closed these meetings yet, tho they may try.  DON wrote a policy to
close COMPASS-Neighborhood Action Teams, NATS meetings, in October, 1999, to
"protect the privacy of citizens under investigation.")

 

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