TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: A Storm is Brewing Over Phone Record Collection

Re: A Storm is Brewing Over Phone Record Collection

Linc Madison (lincmad@suespammers.org)
Wed, 17 May 2006 17:27:06 -0700

In article <telecom25.186.7@telecom-digest.org>, Gordon Burditt
<gordonb.bkvq0@burditt.org> wrote:

> [quoting someone else]

>> You'll never see it but you can bet that all kinds of pattern
>> analysis is taking place to discover which of us are communist err
>> ah I mean Democrats.

> Can't they get that kind of information much more simply by looking
> at voter registration records? Legally, even? Is the fact that I
> voted in the Republicrat primary rather than the Demican one public
> information? When primary time comes around, I get a lot more
> propaganda from candidates in the party primary that I last voted in
> than ones from the other party.

That specific information, yes, they can get much more easily from
voter records, which are public information. In fact, if you put your
unlisted telephone number on your voter registration -- at least in
California -- your telephone number is now in the open public record.
Very few people seem to realize that the phone number is optional on
the voter registration form. I changed my registration to show my
number as 415-555-1234, but the bastards matched my registration to
other records and called me anyway. I'll save the rant about how the
supposed "do not call" registry exempts political campaigns for
another day, though.

Anyway, there are much more nefarious things the current
administration in power -- whether that's the Republicans right now or
the Democrats at some point in the future -- can hunt for in this kind
of data. I heard a sound bite yesterday about trying to track down who
is leaking information to journalists by analysing this kind of
calling data. The Bush administration would not hesitate to claim such
a purpose as "fighting al Qaeda," but I and others disagree.

The government has a history of abusing precisely this kind of
ability. They ask me to trust that they will only use it for the
common good, and I say no way.

Linc Madison * San Francisco, California * lincmad@suespammers.org
<http://www.LincMad.com> * primary e-mail: Telecom at LincMad dot com
Read my political blog, "The Third Path" <http://LincMad.blogspot.com>
DO NOT SEND UNSOLICITED E-MAIL TO THIS ADDRESS. You have been warned.

Post Followup Article Use your browser's quoting feature to quote article into reply
Go to Next message: Thomas Daniel Horne: "Re: A Storm is Brewing Over Phone Record Collection"
Go to Previous message: Thor Lancelot Simon: "Re: Dialing 311? Hold That Call!"
May be in reply to: Maxim Kniazkov: "A Storm is Brewing Over Phone Record Collection"
Next in thread: Thomas Daniel Horne: "Re: A Storm is Brewing Over Phone Record Collection"
TELECOM Digest: Home Page