[geeks] This bogles my mind

[Joshua D. Boyd]

So, if I have a squeaky clean record, does that mean that I should have a
dirty life?  Or do I just need to soil the record.

When I worked for a pharmaceutical company at a manufactoring plant, I
never heard anything about a background check being done.  And I had free
access to all the production lines, etc.

I wonder what would turn up that I don't already know.  I know a few wierd
people, but not many.

It is hard to call being on video constantly a civil liberties violation.
I would consider my right not to be taped to be less than my right to have
a record of what happened on my property.  I think that all video
survailence should be obvious though.  The problem is that my video
camera's might capture what happens outside of my property to.  For
instance, I would like a video feed of people who enter my driveway.  I
can't think of anyway of doing that without capturing information like who
enters a neighbors driveway, or who goes down the street.  If I installed
such a thing, I would have an established policy (I'm told that if you
just follow an established policy, that you can't be gotten for
destruction of evidence) of erasing such records daily when I'm home, and
having an automated process delete sections of video that don't have
activities occuring in my driveway (in other words, the camera would be
motion sensitive, and then a computer would edit out motion that isn't on
my driveway.  

The other problem is that while I feel I have a right to monitor what
happens on my property, I won't appreciate it if someone tries to subpeona
my records because they might inadvertantly tell them something about my
neighbors.  This is exactly how Timothy McVeigh was tracked.  The store
owners cameras also caught part of the street, and the FBI took all that
footage and was able to retrace where the van came from.

I'd be interested in seeing confirmation of the phones being monitored and
the email read by people other than my ISPs employees.

--
Joshua Boyd

On Thu, 28 Jun 2001 ward at zilla.nu wrote:

> Throughout most of our society we are assumed guilty until we prove
> otherwise.  Many many worse things are done to us every day in the name
> of helping us and society.  Pissing in a cup is nothing, yet it's one of
> a few things that guarantees to get folks get bent out of shape.  It
> only proves that you haven't had some illicit drugs _lately_.  Background
> checks, at least good ones, go much much deeper.
> 
> Is a drug test a violation of our civil liberties?  Probably, but it's a
> small one.  Refusing a background check is a much better protest or
> whatever.  Either way, you're not going to get the job.  Of course,
> background checks are run on you almost daily, you just don't know it.
> When I had a DEA check run before I worked for a pharmaceutical
> distributor, they were able to tell me that my ex-gf had taken up
> smoking pot with a sleazy guy I knew.  They confirmed my believe that my
> roommates did not do drugs.  They knew LOTS of stuff about the folks in
> my life, and I was the one under scrutiny.
> 
> If you live in a major city, you are on camera constantly.  Your email is 
> being read.  Your phone conversations are being monitored for keywords 
> and possibly even semantic equivalents.  Your credit report is held by
> two or three companies and they determine your financial, and often
> vocational, future.  Your social security nuber is effectively your
> serial number.  And that's just in the US; the UK has it much worse when
> it comes to privacy.
> 
> The key to surviving is to make sure your public records do not in any 
> way reflect your true life.