| 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.") |