"The Obama administration is drawing up plans to give all U.S. spy agencies full access to a massive database
that contains financial data on American citizens and others who bank
in the country, according to a Treasury Department document seen by
Reuters. Financial institutions that operate in the United States are
required by law to file reports of 'suspicious customer activity.' A
move like the FinCEN proposal 'raises concerns as to whether people
could find their information in a file as a potential terrorist suspect
without having the appropriate predicate for that and find themselves
potentially falsely accused,' said Sharon Bradford Franklin, senior
counsel for the Rule of Law Program at the Constitution Project, a
non-profit watchdog group."
"When Aaron Swartz tapped into MIT's network and scooped up data from one non-profit company, the U.S. Attorney threatened him with 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine. So what kind of jail time did 38 Attorneys General threaten Google with for using its Street View cars
to scoop up passwords, e-mail and other personal information by tapping
into the networks of their states' unsuspecting citizens? None. In agreeing to settle the case, the NY Times reports, Google is required to police its own employees on privacy issues, lecture the public on how to fend off privacy violations like the one Google perpetrated,
and forfeit about 20% of one day's net income. Given the chance, one
imagines that Aaron Swartz would have happily jumped at a comparable
deal."
The fine being $7 million. At least EPIC isn't as cynical and thinks the outcome was positive.
No comments:
Post a Comment