Brain-Jockey

ACLU and Me: Sometimes We Agree

Written by Audrie Zettick on August 15, 2009

A good friend sent me an email she’d received that contained a flash video by the ACLU.  It’s a fictional account of how we might all be ordering pizza in a year or two, given the Federal government’s propensity for collecting information on us.  Check it out.

 

They say humor is best when it’s based on reality.  I’d say this presentation is funny, except it’s also scary.  Do I think we as citizens would let our government get to this point?  Probably not. Yet it’s not too far fetched to think of a health insurance plan that knows what we eat and holds us accountable somehow.

 

The end of the presentation contains a link to a petition asking for repeal of the Real ID Act, passed by Congress in 2005 and requiring that all states share their motor vehicle databases to establish a national ID number for each of us. 

 

We may have worried over this in the Bush administration.  With the potential advent of a national health database, the concern has upped a few notches.   Given that, the ACLU encourages people to send this message:

Dear Friend,

The ACLU needs our help to protect Americans’ right to privacy today!

New technologies and government policies are eroding our personal privacy and creating a 24-hour total surveillance society.  One example is a dangerous program  ominously called the Matrix - that combines state government records with commercially available data to create a vast database capable of compiling and analyzing a profile of every American. 

Click on the postcard to watch this humorous flash video and tell Congress to protect your privacy now!

A couple years ago, I did a few consulting days for a state contractor who (at the time) was trying to pitch matrix-like technology to state government (I was not hired for this aspect of their operations).  The guy that contracted with me told me about it, asked me if I’d like him to put my name in the system to see what they found. It was an eye-opener for me.

 

Thus, when I saw this video from the ACLU, for once, I agree.