Home
Archive
Newsletters
Video
Blogs
Discuss
About
Search
Donate
Advertise

Bush Wants Your Eyeballs

By Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive. Posted June 16, 2008.


George Bush just issued a directive to expand the acquisition of biometric information from citizens, and may share it with foreign governments.

Share and save this post:

      

      

Share on Facebook       

AlterNet Social Networks:
follow us on twitter
find us on Facebook

In Special Coverage

Belief:
What if People Actually Treated Religion as Just a Metaphor (Like Trekkies and Secular Jews)?
Greta Christina

Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
Labor Against the War Shifting Sights to Afghanistan Occupation
Jane Slaughter

DrugReporter:
The War on Weed: Marijuana Is Basically Harmless -- The Monumentally Stupid Drug War Is Not
Jim Hightower

Environment:
20 Weird, Crazy Ideas for Helping the Earth

Food:
The War on Soy: Why the 'Miracle Food' May Be a Health Risk and Environmental Nightmare
Tara Lohan

Health and Wellness:
When Sex Hurts, and No One Can Tell You Why: The Mysterious Condition Called Vulvodynia
Carey Purcell

Immigration:
What Denying Unauthorized Immigrants Health Insurance Will Cost You

Media and Technology:
The Memory Scrub About Why Ft. Hood Happened Is Almost Complete ... If It Weren't for Archives
Mark Ames

Movie Mix:
The Yes Men: Pranksters Out to Fix the World
Mark Engler

Politics:
Just When You Thought It Was Safe: 3 Potential Obstacles to Health-Care Reform
Adele M. Stan

Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Why the New Breast Cancer Guidelines Are Racist
Devona Walker

Rights and Liberties:
Economic Crisis Is Getting Bloody -- Violent Deaths Are Now Following Evictions, Foreclosures and Job Losses
Nick Turse

Sex and Relationships:
Hot Mormon Muffins and Models for Jesus: What's With All the Sexy Christians?
Liz Langley

Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders

Water:
Poseidon's Financial Shell Game: Why Is a Private Desalination Plant Asking for Public Money?
Peter Gleick

World:
The Obama Speech America Is Dying to Hear: "This Administration Ended, Rather Than Extended, Two Wars"
Tom Engelhardt

More stories by Matthew Rothschild

Advertisement
Upcoming AlterNet stories on Digg

Big Brother wants your irises.

George Bush just issued a directive to expand the acquisition of biometric information, and to ensure that agencies across the executive branch share it.

And the Bush Administration may give it to foreign governments, too.

All this according to National Security Presidential Directive Number 59, also known as Homeland Security Presidential Directive Number 24, which George W. Bush signed on June 5.

The directive is aimed at "known and suspected terrorists," as well as "other persons who may pose a threat to national security."

The directive does not say how these other persons who "may pose a threat" are to be defined.

And the directive is so broadly worded that it appears to cover anyone the government has biometric or other personal data on.

"To be most effective, national security identification and screening systems will require timely access to the most accurate and most complete biometric, biographic, and related that are, or can be, made available throughout the executive branch," the document states.

Bush ordered executive departments and agencies to "use mutually compatible methods and procedures in the collection, storage, use, analysis, and sharing of biometric and associated biographic and contextual information of individuals." Agencies are supposed to share this information with each other "to the fullest extent permitted by law" whenever "there is an articulable and reasonable basis for suspicion" that an individual poses a "threat to national security."

The directive does not specify what an "articulable and reasonable basis" might be.

"Known and suspected terrorists," or KSTs, as the document calls them, are not the only concern of the Bush Administration.

It has whole groups of other people that it wants to gather biometric information on.

Within 90 days, the Attorney General is tasked to "recommend categories of individuals in addition to KSTs who may pose a threat to national security," and he is ordered to "set forth cost-effective actions and associated timelines for expanding the collection and use of biometrics to identify and screen for such individuals."

The Attorney General is to coordinate this "with the Secretaries of State, Defense, and Homeland Security, the DNI [Director of National Intelligence], and the Director of Science and Technology Policy."

The Attorney General is also required to identify "legal authorities" to implement the directive.

The directive states that it wants to expand the use of biometrics on individuals "in a lawful and appropriate manner, while respecting their information privacy and other legal rights under United States law."

But the directive offers no suggestion about how those rights would be protected.

The directive also says that the Secretary of State "shall coordinate the sharing of biometric and associated biographic and contextual information with foreign partners."

Under what circumstances the Secretary of State would share such information with "foreign partners" remains unclear. All the directive says is that it would happen "in accordance with applicable law, including international obligations undertaken by the United States."

Give the Bush Administration's demonstrated disdain for applicable law and international obligations, and given its record of violating people's privacy rights, this is not reassuring.

Digg!    Share on facebook   submit to reddit    Bookmark on Delicious   Stumble This  

See more stories tagged with: bush, white house, national security, biometrics

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »


Advertisement
Advertisement

 

You've chosen to turn comments off for the entire site. Would you like to turn them back on?
  • AlterNetYour turn

Support AlterNet
Do you value the information you're getting from AlterNet? Please show your support with a tax-deductible donation.


Feedback
Tell us how we're doing.

Advertisement
Advertisement