And Who's Looking at YOUR Private Information?

At what point does Freedom of Information become too much availability of information? Where is the line drawn that prevents your personal information from falling into the hands of someone you might not want to have it? And how much responsibility does an entity, be it private or public, bear when your information is mishandled by those who have access to it because of their positions?

These questions are being faced by Milwaukee-based WE Energies after the Associated Press obtained documents from them in an employment case, and show a disturbing trend in the practice of "lifting" information from utility, telecommunications, and accounting industries by employees of their clients.

In one case, a landlord was able to access financial information of his tenants, in another, a woman accessed her ex-boyfriends financial accounts repeatedly after they had broken up. Other cases have allowed for individuals to be stalked or suffer from identity theft. And there is little that is done to stop it, privacy experts say.

Vast computer databases give curious employees the ability to look up sensitive information on people with the click of a mouse. The WE Energies database includes credit and banking information, payment histories, Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, and energy usage. In some cases, it even includes income and medical information.

Experts say some companies do little to stop such abuses even though they could lead to identity theft, stalking and other privacy invasions. And companies that uncover violations can keep them quiet because in many cases it is not illegal to snoop, only to use the data for crimes.

"The vast majority of companies are doing very little to stop this widespread practice of snooping," said Larry Ponemon, a privacy expert who founded The Ponemon Institute, a Traverse City, Mich.-based think tank.

What if the snooping is done with the intention of committing a crime? Isn't it too late, once a crime has been committed, to deal with the situation? Jay Foley, executive director of the Identity Theft Resources Center, agrees, stating, "Something needs to be done at the state level to make sure this is illegal." His solution? Tracking software that can tell which employees have accessed customer accounts, and intervention by state regulators and lawmakers if companies are less than vigilant in safeguarding the private information of their customers.

The problem with this solution, however, is knowing which software to choose, and which software is also available on the market that might be used to counter it.

The issue came to light in 2004 when acting mayor Marvin Pratt lost to his rival, current mayor Tom Barrett, in a heated Milwaukee mayoral election, after an employee helped to leak information to the media regarding Pratt, including that Pratt was often late in paying his utility bills. Pratt is convinced the incident cost him the race and damaged his reputation, and recently has met with top WE executives, who have assured him that the problem has been stopped "as much as possible." He has dropped plans for a possible lawsuit against WE.

The employee who leaked Pratt's information has been terminated, by that hasn't ended the problem. Between 2005 and 2007 at least 17 employees have been terminated or faced disciplinary action for breaking client confidentiality. Another was suspended in 2005 for accessing Pratt's account unrelated to company business, but was allowed to keep her job.

But it doesn't stop with WE. The IRS handled 219 disciplinary actions last year alone, a number double the previous year. Minnesota Department of Public Safety said that two of it's employees had accessed information on 400 residents through it's driver's license database, leading to disciplinary action that was not disclosed because the investigation is ongoing.

Nor is the problem limited to the United States. In a 2006 Australian case, 111 people resigned or were terminated from their positions with Centrelink:

There were 790 security breaches at government agency Centrelink involving 600 staff. Staff were found to have inappropriately accessed databases containing citizens' information. The databases are used to administer social security, pension and unemployment benefits. Prime Minister John Howard is said to be considering a proposal which would use this database for a new national identity card which is under consideration.

In total 19 Centrelink employees have been sacked and 92 others have resigned. Police are conducting investigations into five employees, they said.

According to testimonies and depositions, the employees don't generally see anything wrong with accessing this information, either. Employees see nothing wrong with pulling up information on a customer out of curiosity to see a little bit into their private lives.

Perhaps it is nothing more than a little fascination and idle curiosity in the majority of cases. Humans are curious creatures, and when they have the means to satisfy their certain curiosities, they will apply them. A little snooping can't cause any harm, right? But suppose, just for the sake of argument, that someone was snooping for more than just idle curiosity. What happens in these cases? Is allowing employee snooping of customer information a powder keg that is waiting to explode? Or is it just something that happens, and isn't much to really worry about?

What do YOU think? Do you know who's accessing your personal information and what they're doing with what they find?

Points to definitely ponder.

Once and Always, an American Fighting Man


.

Under pressure...under pressure...

Remember the old Queen/David Bowie song, Under Pressure? Hit song, the backbeat of which was the subject of a lawsuit because of Vanilla Ice using it for HIS song Ice Ice Baby without permission?

Is that the theme song for our current seated Congress?

I've been watching CSPAN for a bit this afternoon, and I have to say, for Congress to be whining about how that they're "Under Pressure" in regards to the FISA bill, which they've had before them to handle since APRIL, they seem to be discussing everything BUT.

And Congress deserves their recent pay raise for this session?

What have they done, actually, that warrants a pay raise? They've managed to rename a few post offices. Is that what the people sent them to Congress to do? This is progressive work? This is the "change" that the Democrats said that the people of this country wanted? I ask you this, you being the American public, are doctored votes, surrender politics, retreat policies, retreat FROM retreat policies, higher taxes, and hypocritical smoke and mirror tactics regarding the Unites States Attorneys what you voted for?

Are you, those of you who claim to be Democrats, so hypocritical that you're willing to have the President and the United States Attorney General taken to task for doing exactly the same thing that President Clinton and Attorney General Reno did? Which, I might add, was completely and totally LEGAL in both instances.

Do you Democrats want political posturing instead of substantial policy?

Do you Democrats really think that there would be that substantial a difference in having our troops here at home rather than having them deployed and fighting our enemies?

Do you Democrats really think that radical Islamic extremists, who were attacking our country BEFORE 9/11, are really going to just stop if we abandon the Middle East tomorrow?

Here's a good one from the past few days; do you Democrats REALLY think that George W. Bush is responsible for the bridge collapse in Minnesota? Do you really NOT understand that the funds WERE THERE for improvements, but that those funds were used for building the Twins a new ball field and stadium and other pet projects INSTEAD of being used for road improvements, having been allocated by LOCAL political figures for those things?

Do you Democrats have ANY CAPACITY at all for accepting ANY responsibility without pointing blaming fingers at everyone else but those who are truly responsible for things?

Or are you so brainwashed by the main stream media and the Democratic National Party and the quasi religion of liberalism that reality is out of your range of vision now?

The rest of us are waiting with baited breath for answers to these questions and more...

It's time to call upon ourselves as individuals to take responsibility for ourselves and for our nation as a whole. In the process of this, we HAVE to make our elected officials accountable for doing something PRODUCTIVE, not for partisan politics not as usual, but far worse than at any other time that I personally remember since the Carter administration.

Our nation has not been this divided since reaching the Compromise of 185o, and look where, ten years later, we wound up anyway. For those of you who slept through your history classes, that would what is popularly called the Civil War.

History does repeat itself, people, because we don't learn the lessons of it.

Once and Always, an American Fighting Man

.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back onto the playground…

Remember kindergarten? If I go back into the deep, dark recesses of my mind, I can. Letters, numbers, words, drawing, naps on little mats on the floor. School is supposed to be where you learn how to read, write, and as the old timers used to say, to “cipher.”

What part of reading, writing, and mathematics involves sex education? I suppose you could argue, tongue in cheek, that that would be multiplication, but let’s get serious here, because this is a very, very serious issue.

Our high schools are failing dismally. Students are graduating unable to do the most basic of mathematics and language skills. This has been an ongoing problem for decades, and it’s getting worse with each graduating class. Colleges are forced to offer remedial programs to prepare incoming freshman for freshman level English and algebra courses because they are coming INTO college ill prepared FOR a college education. Something is wrong with this picture.

Public education has taken on the mantle of being the be all end all in the rearing of your children. People who are in charge of the public education think that THEY KNOW BETTER how your children should be reared than you, the parents, do, and they create program after program that have NOTHING to do with teaching reading, writing, OR arithmetic. Educational theorists have TONS of ideas that colleges and universities incorporate into the Educational Instruction programs, training teachers to be everything BUT teachers.

The word “teacher” is even outmoded, having been replaced with the more politically correct “educator.”

How do I know this? Let me remind you, in case you’ve forgotten, or inform you if you didn’t know; I hold a BS in education and held licenses to teach history and government, which basically means double majors of education and history with a minor in political science. I have BEEN in the public education system, and let me tell you, from what I saw, it’s a money making racket. Textbooks and standardized testing are an industry. There is less concern with making sure that children get a quality education and learn something than there is a concern with making sure that the tests are watered down enough that my five year old Labrador retriever could take and pass them if he had a non opposable thumb. (When in doubt, check “C”). Case in point, I know one particular student who graduated over twenty years ago who had taken no higher mathematics in high school than algebra I who opened up the math portion of his ACT test, looked ahead at some of the equations based in calculus, geometry, and trigonometry, scratched his head, muttered “the hell with it,” and started circling in the “C” blocks through most of that portion of the test. He passed. Not with a low score, either.

Liberals are firmly entrenched in the education field. Many of these people who enter “educating”, screw that, let’s call it what it should be called, teaching. Many of the people who enter teaching go straight from the high school classroom to the college classroom, and then BACK into the education system into the classroom as teachers. Their entire life, from the time that they enter the system until they retire, is spent in the classroom. Is it any wonder that they are filled with a lot of theory when they have no practical experience with anything else? I was one of the rare exceptions to the rule. I was a military veteran, a veteran firefighter, and had a contractor background for my work experiences. I was totally and completely out of my element being surrounded by these feel good, think good, right speak children who were learning to be teachers. It led to more than a few rather heated debates with professors over matters of theory versus reality and an ongoing conflict (war) with campus administration who had obviously labeled me as a trouble maker.

I find it amusing, looking back now, that the handful of people whom I got along well with were one history professor in his eighties whom I considered then and still as my mentor, both in the subjects of history and politics (he had been an oil rig worker in his youth and was the FOREMOST historian on the war of northern aggression), a philosophy professor, a geology professor, and two of the campus police officers.

I digress, but it makes for a point. Teachers are not being taught to teach your children what they need to know, they’re being taught to be surrogate parents under state mandate to indoctrinate your children with what the state wants your children to know.

Think I’m off base?

Let’s see how many of you parents out there get as pissed off about THIS as I did when I considered my seven year old daughter:

Sex Ed for Kindergarteners 'Right Thing to Do,' Says Obama

July 18, 2007 1:13 PM

ABC News' Teddy Davis and Lindsey Ellerson Report: Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told Planned Parenthood Tuesday that sex education for kindergartners, as long as it is "age-appropriate," is "the right thing to do."

"I remember Alan Keyes . . . I remember him using this in his campaign against me," Obama said in reference to the conservative firebrand who ran against him for the U.S. Senate in 2004. Sex education for kindergartners had become an issue in his race against Keyes because of Obama’s work on the issue as chairman of the health committee in the Illinois state Senate.

"'Barack Obama supports teaching sex education to kindergarteners,'" said Obama mimicking Keyes' distinctive style of speech. "Which -- I didn’t know what to tell him (laughter)."

"But it’s the right thing to do," Obama continued, "to provide age-appropriate sex education, science-based sex education in schools."
Watch the video:
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3386492

Speaking to a young woman who asked a question about sex education, Obama said, "You, as a peer, can have enormous power over your age cohort but you’ve got to have some support from the schools. You certainly should not have to be fighting each and every instance by providing accurate information outside of the classroom because inside the classroom the only thing that can be talked about is abstinence."

THIS man wants to be your president, ladies and gentlemen. Kindergartners haven’t even reached PUBERTY and Barack Hussein Obama wants them to learn about sex. Oh, of course he adds the disclaimers into his statement; sure, he would HAVE to do that so that what he’s said doesn’t come across quite so dangerously. The bottom line is that Barack Hussein Obama wants sex education to start as early as kindergarten.

I want you, the reader, to take this information with you as you finish reading this article, and to think about it long and hard.

It matters.

It is very important.

Barack Hussein Obama is simply ONE politician who thinks this way. Don’t kid yourself into thinking that there aren’t others. And I will guarantee you that each and every one of them is a liberal.

In the 1960’s, Nikita Khrushchev said to the United States at the United Nations, “Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!” This was later “amended” by Khrushchev who said “I once said, "We will bury you," and I got into trouble with it. Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you.” Take a look back through the years at public education and the growing mindset of Marxist theory that has inundated our government and our public education system. They WILL take us over without firing a shot, at this rate, if we don’t get a grip on what our children are being taught today. And they will do it by the electoral process, killing liberty not with a war, but to the delight of the indoctrinated masses…

Reading.

Writing.

Arithmetic.

From these come the foundations to teach our children to do something unthinkable. They can learn to THINK.

Leave parenting to parents. Good or bad, it's on them.

Sex Ed for kindergartners my arse.

"He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future," Adolf Hitler.

"How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think," Adolf Hitler.

“That government is best which governs least,” Thomas Paine.

“The GREATEST sin to be committed by modern man is the sin of failure to think,” MT (yes, it’s finally time that I take credit for my own quote, and I might as well do so here. Feel free to use it and share it with others).

“I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine,” Ayn Rand, from Atlas Shrugged.

Once and Always, an American Fighting Man

.

American Nazis: the Bastardization of Free Speech

How many of you out there have kids? Have they ever done anything that was beyond the bounds of your intentions with their freedoms? We've already discussed the Imus thing today (and for the past two weeks, ai ai ai ai ai) and determined that while Don Imus had the RIGHT to say the things he said, should he have said them?

NOT going to digress here. Before I continue, hat tip to Captain's Quarters for this one:

On April 20, 2007, the American National Socialist Workers Party of Roanoke, VA—a neo-Nazi group—plans to march through the predominantly African-American neighborhood of Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati. The city initially issued a permit to the group for its march, but the permit was soon revoked and prohibitions were added by city officials limiting the group’s demonstration to a three-block area. Believing their constitutional rights to free speech and free assembly have been violated, the ACLU of Ohio will be defending the demonstrators.

Read the rest of it here.

Here is the thing. The Nazi party was banned in Europe at the end of World War II during denazification. Nazism resulted in the deaths of over 6 million Jews in Europe in an attempt at genocide( the Holocaust, for those of you who need a little reeducation on the subject). Nazism has a proven track record of promoting hatred, violence, and death. There is nothing noble for which the ideology stands. Their message is one of superiority of one "master race" rather than the proven power of the individual.

Does a city government have the responsibility to maintain peace and order within it's boundaries? Yes. Given the proven track record of the Nazi party, and they can try to water the name down by taking it to it's root "National Socialist" all they want to but a pig is still a pig no matter if you try to call it Sophie, the town of Cincinnati, Ohio was well within it's legal rights to take the steps that it has taken.

I know I'm not with a majority on this one, as it falls under the "free speech" category. I honestly think that these groups deliberatly do things like this in an attempt to push the envelope and undermine the intentions of the First Amendment. As I said regarding Don Imus, Freedom of Speech carries with it the responsibility of self-control. Freedom of Speech does NOT expressly give a group or an individual the right to incite hatred or violence. Freedom of Speech was designed to ensure that individuals could speak their minds without fear of the government arresting them for their words. It was not, never has been, a free license to promote hatred and bigotry.

As I've said before on this site, I was a soldier in our nations armed forces. Our very task was the protection of the citizenry of this country to live freely under the guarantees of the Constitution. This ensures the rights of all people, even the left, to speak their minds. Promoting hatred, promoting racism, in my mind, are not "speaking your mind." In MY mind, promoting these things are acts of sedition against our people, and against our government, a government which was established BY the people, OF the people, and FOR the people. Not just one group of people.

Contact the ACLJ today to encourage them to fight the ACLU on this.

We cannot allow the re rise of Nazism. Too many have been murdered on its altar already.

Never again.

NEVER again.

Once and Always, an American Fighting Man


What others are saying about this:

When the Nazis Came to Skokie

ACLU To Defend Nazis Again

Free Speech In Cincinnati


Stop on it at Stop the ACLU for more on this.

.