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12/07/2005 Archived Entry: "Katherine Albrecht interviewed in Mother Jones"

OUR OWN KATHERINE ALBRECHT IS INTERVIEWED IN MOTHER JONES. Activism does indeed make strange bedfellows -- and good strategic connections.

MJ: How might the government use this technology for homeland security?

KA: Depending on your politics, you may attend a peace rally or a gun show or a talk by a Muslim cleric or a union meeting or a particular political rally, all of which are protected by the First Amendment. But in the RFID world, federal agents could attend that meeting with a hand-held reader hidden in a backpack, mill around long enough to capture a couple thousand RFID numbers associated with the people at the meeting, upload all of that to a central database, cross-reference it, and figure out everybody who was there.

Also, once you’ve got the private sector wielding all of this technology, they are at liberty to sell that information to the federal government. At that point, the government does not run a foul of Constitution restrictions for essentially spying on its own citizens. There are a lot of private sector-government partnerships in sharing of this information once it’s been gathered, and we anticipate that there will be more and more of that in coming years.

BTW, when I did my last Amazon.com bookstore update, I neglected to add 2005's most important book -- Katherine and Liz McIntyre's Spychips. Fixed that a few days ago.

Posted by Claire @ 08:06 AM CST
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