"The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either."
Benjamin Franklin

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HUH?

Here's some facts that you may or may not already know:

- If you have an airbag in your car, you already have a device connected to it which is recording your vehicle's speed, engine speed, gas and breaking pressure. This device, sometimes called a "black box" but it is actually in a titanium and steel casing, has already been used numerous times in criminal courts against unknowing defendants to motor vehicle crashes.

- At least four major rental car companies have passive GPS installed in their fleet. The most notorious states were California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, where a lot of rental car companies impose severe fees for taking a vehicle across state lines. A renter who drove a vehicle from San Francisco to Las Vegas successfully settled a class action lawsuit when the fact that his driving was being continuously recorded was not disclosed to the renter and 300 other individuals who were similarly slapped with fees. These fees turned $300 rental bills into $1,300 rental bills.

- Approximately 35% of employers now include comprhensive credit reports in job screening for new hires. Almost all of which also include in these waivers a "right to pull" in the future during the entire length of your employ, at random, and without further express permission by you. However, an employer is now required by law to inform you in writing if your credit report was used for an adverse employment decision.

- Choicepoint, based in Atlanta, has the US Government as one of its largest customers. A Choicepoint report includes, at minimum, the following:
Address and telephone number records
Property ownership records
Business license records
Arrest records
Court conviction records
MVR/CLUE (Motor Vehicle Registration, Claims Loss Underwriting Exchange Report), cataloging a complete record of every vehicle you have ever owned and every insurance loss you have ever filed
Medical Claims Records (why does Choicepoint even have these? Sounds like HIPAA violation waiting to happen)
Consumer Reporting Agency backgrounds (all of your credit reports, which can go back over 10 years)
Bankruptcy/Lein records
Civil Filings by you and against you in all counties, states and in District court

By the time you are 25, your Choicepoint report can already stretch to about the same number of pages, if not more.

I think the only thing that Choicepoint hasn't gotten their hands on yet is income tax returns. However, it seems like that is fairly benign information to release, since you have already stripped away your life with all the other records combined.

If all these institutions can gather all of this crap and not allow us to see it or control how it is pulled, then why not just make it all open for everybody to look at? Honestly!

I'd like to run a background check on the employer's brass before I work at another Enron.

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WHYY pays their CEO $750,000 a year. So WHYY should I renew my membership? Seems they have no problems finding money and spending it unwisely.


And this is why you should donate to PACCA, not PETA:

In September, PETA made headlines in Vermont and across the nation for asking Ben & Jerry's ice cream to use human breast milk in their ice cream, instead of cow milk