http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_btl/20000210_xcbtl_outsourcin.shtml

WHOA! This is interesting! And very frightening! Big BRO is watching you! and you, and you, and you, and - well you get the point.

-- mutter (murmur@ya.com), February 10, 2000

Answers

I work with Acxiom on a regular basis. They are not a well-run company, but the information they compile is public information, and the reason they will not reveal sources is that list compilation is a very competitive market.

Unlisted phone numbers?? Now that is a problem, but not unsolvable. All one needs to do is put a block on your outbound calls. The local phone book tells how do do this.

In addition, If one calls the Direct Marketing Association in New York city(sorry, link-impaired), they can register with two services- one to get off mailing lists, and the other to get off call lists. All legitimate direct marketers, who mail and/or call will run the lists they have acquired past the no-call/no-mail names.

I know for a fact that Acxiom does use these lists to eliminate names; they are too big a player in the business and many large direct marketers use them. If these direct marketers were to mail or call these names, they would be run out of the business quickly.

We are not totally powerless to protect our privacy. I have said on this forum before that another way to stop the flood of credit card offers, etc, is to write letters to Experian, Trans-Union, and Equifax, and tell them to remove your name from their marketing department. This is protected by title 15 of the US Code. The service bureaus must stop selling your name/information upon receipt of your letter.

-- futureshock (gray@matter.think), February 10, 2000.

FutureShock,

I have no doubt that your information is correct. You offered some very useful and specific information, and I thank you. I will likely use some of it soon. From that point on, however, I have to disagree.

Your response certainly applies to what I've seen termed "the well-informed consumer".

Now, how about the tens of millions of Amercans who either aren't so well informed, or who are not very computer-literate? How about what I'd guess to be a large percentage of the elderly? People, largely law-abiding, in both of those groups are systematically seeing their privacy raped -- and most of them don't even know the true scope of it.

Yesterday's "Surveilled" is another take on this large topic.

Speaking for myself, I too try to be "well-informed" and try to guard my privacy; and I am angry that I regularly have to work to discover the newest ways that I have to guard my privacy. There aren't enough hours in the days many times!

And the above presumes good intentions and near-total accuracy on the part of those compiling and utilizing those databases.

Personal experience (working) in gov't strongly tells me that the "good intentions" part is one very dangerous assumption. Personal experience with databases also tells me that "near-total accuracy" does not always exist. A single-digit error rate can result in my life being turned upside-down! Further, it is not likely that I as a simple consumer would ever have access to or knowledge of how to contest or correct inaccurate information in these databases, if I even knew of all of them that exist, today.

Perhaps the only good that I can offer is to remember the old adage that "the best place to hide is in a crowd". That adage, however, predates today's very sophisticated data mining technologies by a long, long time.

My question to all of you reading this thread is to ask who owns the infomation about you? Do you own it, and all rights to use it, or is it free for anyone to use (public information)? Very darn little of these sorts of information can exist unless you explicitly do something, be it making a phone call, using your plastic, visiting the mall, or whatever. Each of you are creating those billions of pieces of data by doing something.

You created the source for the data, for what others think is free for the taking -- do you, or should you, own all rights to it?

-- Redeye in Ohio (cannot@work.com), February 10, 2000.

Out-sourcing Big Brother

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You tell me if I'm just being paranoid. An Arkansas company with ties to Mochtar Riady, the billionaire Indonesian and Chinese intelligence agent, has amassed 135 million consumer telephone numbers -- including about 20 million unlisted numbers -- to help identify and profile people who call toll-free lines to shop or make an inquiry.

The company is called Acxiom Corp. of Conway, Ark. Formerly it was called Alltel, and before that Systematics.

You might remember hearing about Systematics. The company was owned by Jackson Stephens, the billionaire Arkansas partner of Riady and a strong financial backer of President Clinton. Hillary Clinton, Webster Hubbell and Vincent Foster all worked on a secret National Security Agency project for Systematics while at the Rose Law Firm.

Well, darn, if the Rose Law Firm connection doesn't still exist with the company under a new name. The general counsel for Acxiom is Catherine L. Hughes, 48, a former public defender and assistant state attorney general who worked at Rose from 1983 through 1988.

Hughes describes herself as something of a civil libertarian, but her company is a walking, talking, 3,000-man, privacy-invading monster if ever I have seen one.

When someone makes a toll-free call to a client of Acxiom, a telemarketing agent can learn who the caller is and where he or she lives, even before answering the call. The agent can also find out the kind of home the caller lives in, the type of cars the owners drive, whether they exercise or own a cat.

This is the kind of thing Acxiom brags about. What the company is more reticent to share with the public is its means of gathering such data.

Acxiom executives will not say exactly how they had gathered the 20 million unlisted numbers in their database, which, they claim, represents about half of all unlisted numbers in the United States. They are quick to point out there is nothing illegal in gathering such information.

Currently, Axciom is on an acquisition frenzy -- buying up every database company you can imagine, in the United States and abroad.

Acxiom officials point out with pride that telephone numbers, even those individuals pay to keep unlisted, are fast becoming consumer tags, akin to Social Security numbers. Isn't that exciting news, consumer?

If privacy concerns aren't enough to worry you with regard to Acxiom, think about this.

Systematics is a name wrapped up in so many Clinton scandals it would make your head spin. The company, for instance, obtained clearance to accompany Ron Brown on foreign trade trips.

In 1996, according to records from the Federal Election Commission, William Cravens, an old Clinton pal, contributed to both Republican and Democrat campaigns. In late May 1996, Cravens wrote a check to a Republican candidate for Congress using Alltel, the renamed Systematics, as his employer. Three days later, Cravens, the former CEO of Systematics, wrote a second check for a Democratic senatorial candidate, this time listing his employer as "Entergy Corp."

Have you ever seen a company with so many aliases?

The connections to Entergy Corp. again lead back to Indonesia and Mochtar Riady. In 1994, Ron Brown took a delegation of U.S. businesses to China. Among the businesses allowed to fly with the Commerce secretary was Entergy, a U.S. utility company that did business in Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas. Entergy later signed a $2 billion dollar deal with the Chinese government and the North China Power Group to build a 1,200-megawatt power plant in Datong, China.

The Entergy deal was also worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Entergy's partner, Riady. In fact, the North China Power Group renamed the entire project the "Lippo Entergy Datong Power Plant," giving top billing to the largest investor and financier from Indonesia.

But wait. This story gets even more bizarre. In January of last year, I told you how an Arkansas medical examiner had once again concluded "suicide" in a case where common sense might determine otherwise.

On Nov. 17, 1998, Charles Wilbourne Miller, 63, was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head in a shallow pit about 300 yards from his ranch house near Little Rock.

Police found a .410 shotgun near Miller's body and a Ruger .357- caliber revolver submerged in water. Investigators concluded the Ruger was the weapon used by Miller to kill himself. Yet, two rounds in the handgun's cylinder had been spent.

Only in Arkansas, I noted, does a suicide victim use two shots -- not to mention two weapons -- to kill himself.

Worse yet, Miller was no ordinary citizen of Arkansas. He had long served as executive vice president and member of the board of directors for a company called -- are you ready? -- Alltel. Only recently have Arkansas officials investigating Miller's death decided -- whoops! -- maybe it wasn't a suicide after all, just as I had deduced from 2,000 miles away reading news accounts. It's now being investigated as a homicide.

Now stay with me. I know this is complicated. But it's important. Don't let your eyes glaze over. This is necessary background to understanding the nature of the "private" company that has all this information on you.

Alltel, as I mentioned, was the former name of Systematics and the predecessor to Acxiom. Alltel was the incarnation of the company that provided the software for the White House's "Big Brother" data base system, and Systematics was the incarnation of the company when it was behind the administration's plan to develop the secret computer "Clipper" chip to bug every phone, fax and email transmission in America.

There has been at least one other high-profile "suicide" among the inner circle involved with the "Clipper" chip project -- Foster, who, we now know attended critical NSA planning meetings on the Clipper chip project, along with then-Associate Attorney General Hubbell, Attorney General Janet Reno and then-White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum.

It was Stephens' effort to get Systematics the job of handling the data processing for the Washington, D.C., First American Bank that led to the BCCI takeover of the institution. Hillary Clinton and Foster represented Systematics in that endeavor. Later Foster became an overseer of NSA's relationship with Systematics. And later still, he got dead. No matter what Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr says, his death has never been explained adequately as a suicide.

Foster's deep connections to the Whitewater scandal, the Travelgate scandal, the Filegate scandal and this spying scandal have never been examined by any of the official probes into his death.

How big and how sensitive was the Clipper chip project? According to a 1996 report to Vice President Al Gore by former CIA Director John Deutch, Reno proposed an all-out federal takeover of the computer industry. The Justice Department proposed legislation that would ban the import and domestic manufacture, sale or distribution of encryption that did not have key recovery.

Prime targets for monitoring would be foreign governments, banks, corporations, and individuals opposing the Clinton administration. The keys were to be held by "key recovery agents" licensed by the Commerce Department. Key recovery is a government back-door system designed to secretly monitor computers.

Now, I know what some of you are going to say: "Conspiracy theorist." Well, la di da. I haven't woven any conspiracy theories, folks. All I've given you here are the facts -- facts that have been conveniently ignored by every other news agency in the world.

What does it mean? I'm not certain. But I hope you find it as interesting -- and frightening -- as I do.

Some overriding questions leap to my mind: Did Acxiom or Alltell or Systematics or whatever you want to call it gain access to this overwhelming amount of data on the public through its cozy, some might say "incestuous" relationship with the Clinton administration? Was this a way of outsourcing the government's Big Brother plans? Was this a way for Clinton pals to receive personal benefit from their public contracts?

Unfortunately, I don't think Janet Reno's Justice Department will be examining that question any time soon.

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), February 10, 2000.

Wellllll look here.

Just as we knew the Clintons and the Democratic National Committee were getting Chinese money in 92 and 96 from the Communistic Chinese...conveniently covered up and excused by Glenn's "treasonous" behavior in the Senate investigation...we just didn't know then WHY they were getting Chinese money. What were the Chinese getting in return?

Well, now we know they were getting weapons and automatic rifle and machine gun contracts, defense secrets, missile technology, satellite and telephone communications methodologies, encryption and secure military transmission methods, protection against a Taiwan takeover, and "permission" to export missile and nuclear weapons to other nations.

But - the national press conveniently ignored this.

---...---

So, now we see the real reason the Clintons were after the clipper chip, the v-chip, the Intel's and high tech companies.....

---...---

And yet another murder (I'm sorry. "Suicide by multiple shots in the back of the neck") associated with Clinton.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), February 10, 2000.

Remember that the Riady clan has huge holdings in coal in Indonesia and other countries in that area.

Now, which western state a few years back saw a large chunk of that state grabbed into being a federal park. Land under which were enough coal resources that early years' state taxes would have just about totally replaced the school system -- buildings and all?

Cha-friggen-ching!

Shifting gears, the more and more of this crud that seeps out just keeps making it all that much harder to in good conscience tell common folks I know that their vote means something. This crud just keeps doing more damage, making those good people feel yet more marginalized, more used, abused and "rode hard and put-away-wet".

-- Redeye in Ohio (cannot@work.com), February 10, 2000.

But the Clintons didn't use their appointments to protect their illegal behavior either, did they?

...and the media ignored this too......all the while loudly investigating charges of Bush's drug use almost twenty years ago...of which they have NO evidence.

But treason and interfering in judicial cases ... nah, not interested. Not important. Not relevent to their agenda. Not helpful to the democrats getting elected.

---...--- this from the Washington Times - og course, the NY Times and Washigton Post ignored it.

February 10, 2000

New probe ordered in judicial assigning By Jerry Seper THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A judicial body that oversees the conduct of judges at the federal court in Washington, D.C., yesterday ordered a new investigation into the assignment of criminal cases involving friends and associates of President Clinton to judges appointed by the president.

The Judicial Council of the D.C. Circuit, in a terse two-paragraph ruling, ordered acting Appeals Court Chief Judge Stephen F. Williams to determine why a random computer assignment system at the court was bypassed in four campaign fund-raising prosecutions and a tax-evasion case against Clinton pal Webster L. Hubbell.

Chief District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson abandoned the computer system to send the cases to judges appointed by Mr. Clinton. She has declined public comment on the decision, but told The Washington Times in a letter last month she was authorized to assign "protracted or complex criminal cases to consenting judges when circumstances warrant," although she did not elaborate.

The new investigation was sought by Rep. Howard Coble, North Carolina Republican and chairman of a House subcommittee that oversees the courts, and Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm.

Mr. Coble asked the Judicial Council in January to investigate the case assignments, saying there were questions concerning the propriety of Judge Johnson's decision to bypass random assignments.

"I have traditionally been reluctant to insert my oars into judicial waters, but this situation cried out for oars to be inserted," Mr. Coble said yesterday. "Judge Johnson received notice of my concerns in August and in November, and she declined to respond.

"That set a bell off in my head and prompted me to get involved, and while I'm not interested in slam-dunking anyone, there is smoke here and we need to find out if there also is a fire," he said.

Mr. Coble, chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on the courts and intellectual property, said in his Judicial Council letter the judge's actions "may have been prejudicial to the effective and impartial administration" of the court's business.

"Judge Johnson bypassed the random case-assignment process in four campaign-finance cases potentially embarrassing to the president, the [Democratic National Committee] and Democrats generally, and one case involving President Clinton's close personal friend, Webster Hubbell," he said. "Did Chief Judge Johnson abuse her discretion under the rule and should she have allowed the normal random case assignment to occur?"

Judicial Watch's complaint in the case was dismissed by Judge Williams, who labeled the matter as "frivolous" in a November opinion.

"All we requested was an investigation and this is an important step in that direction," said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch.

Earlier this month, senior judges at the federal court abolished the policy that let Judge Johnson bypass the random assignment system. Instead, they created a new system in which high-profile or lengthy cases will be assigned on a random basis to a separate pool that will include all the judges.

Mr. Coble's concerns focused on cases involving Mr. Hubbell, former associate attorney general; Arkansas businessman Charles Yah Lin Trie; Democratic fund-raiser Howard Glicken; Thai lobbyist Pauline Kanchanalak; and Miami fund-raiser Mark B. Jimenez.

The judges were Paul L. Friedman, James Robertson and Emmet G. Sullivan, all of whom were named to the bench by Mr. Clinton in 1994; and Henry H. Kennedy Jr., appointed by Mr. Clinton in 1997.

In his letter, Mr. Coble challenged the Johnson assignments in the Hubbell and Trie cases and said the subcommittee had "additional information" that would "justify" a new inquiry. He said the new information included Judge Johnson's assignment of the Glicken, Kanchanalak and Jimenez cases, which "again bypassed the random case-assignment system."

"The Judicial Council simply accepted Judge Johnson's justification in support of her action and concluded that in the circumstances presented, a purely conclusionary allegation . . . is not enough to justify a search for [evidence of misconduct]," he said. "How much evidence would be enough to justify an investigation?"

Mr. Coble's concerns about the case assignments surfaced after two federal appeals court panels reinstated the Hubbell case that Judge Robertson had thrown out and reversed Judge Friedman's ruling in the Trie case, resulting in his guilty plea several days later. Another appeals court panel reinstated charges against Mrs. Kanchanalak of making false statements to the Federal Election Commission about money she contributed to the DNC.

He also said in his letter that "no rationalization can possibly justify" the assignment of the Glicken case to Judge Kennedy, adding there was "nothing complicated or protracted about this case" and Glicken's attorney announced on the day he was charged he would plead guilty.

Glicken was fined $80,000 in 1998 for illegally soliciting a $20,000 foreign contribution in 1993 for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee after presidential friend Vernon E. Jordan asked the judge for leniency in the case. Judge Kennedy ordered the fine in response to Glicken's guilty plea on charges he requested a $20,000 donation from a foreign national.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), February 10, 2000.

Robert Cook, you really should put this article up on the board and let everyone here know about this! way too important to be buried in one thread! Go for it!

-- mutter (murmur@ya.com), February 10, 2000.

Here's a link that will tie up privatization, contractors,welfare, courts, employers, workers, children, men and women as lovers and Big Brother into one can of worms. Note: the OAG is rushing to meet electronic standards and protocols implemented by the Fed and this significantly impacts the employer data base through support deduction and New Hire reporting. No one escapes. "Customer service" means persons paying support and employers who are deducting payments from employees checks and routing them to the child support unit as well as custodial parents collecting it.NOW throw in that wonderful private contractor and see what happens.... Just hit the news here. If there weren't real people involved this would be fun to watch.

http://www.sao.state.tx.us/ 7-00 An Audit Report on Selected Initiatives of the Child Support Division of the Office of the Attorney General 00-009 15

By the way, hats off to SAO-they have some real b***-buster reports on their site and it took guts to post'em as they found 'em especially in this "reformed" atmosphere we've been choking on. Hack

-- another government hack (keepwatching_2000@yahoo.com), February 10, 2000.