The Privatization of Big Brother
Special to The Dubya Report
May 21, 2003

As the 2004 presidential campaign has gotten underway in earnest in the last few weeks, two disturbing trends have coincided. First, new questions have emerged concerning data aggregator ChoicePoint, including revelations that the firm provided the Department of Homeland Security with information on foreign nationals obtained under questionable circumstances. ChoicePoint's DBT subsidiary gained notoriety during the 2000 election as the company that produced the error-laden "purge list" of Florida voters, ultimately found to be 97% incorrect. Second, as states have rushed to upgrade their vote-gathering systems, in response to the Voting Rights Act of 2002, serious questions have been raised about the security and integrity of electronic voting machines. These events have occurred in a political climate in which a federal agency was recently employed in a state partisan endeavor, when the Department of Homeland Security was called upon to help locate Democratic state legislators from Texas who had fled to Oklahoma in order to thwart a redistricting plan that would have altered the political makeup of the US House of Representatives.

Read Article