#
On 27 Apr 2001, at 14:47, Ross A. Finlayson wrote:
> I have suggested in the past that government agencies be required to abandon
> interagency unique identifiers. For example, the "Taxpayer Identification
> Number", "TIN", or as it is more often known the "Social Security Number", is
> too widespread. For example, some types of fraud play upon information
> readily accessible from that, which is why banks and many private people
> reserve that kind of personal information.
#Never happen; it serves gov't purposes to track you in detail. The
opportunities this presents to criminals to cause you grief is of no
concern to them. Try opening a bank account w/o a SSN.
>
> Moreso than that, I want to see the money trail, where our taxes go, in
> general enough terms. It's easy, or not, to get the copies of the budgets
> >from the Government Printing Office, but the goal is to be able to audit the
> government, to some extent, to ensure that they perform legally, effectively,
> and with due diligence.
#Again, never happen. Even if the books were opened, there are
literally thousands of incompatible accounting systems in use within
the federal government alone. The Pentagon uses several hundred (last
I heard). If you kept your books like this, you'd be thrown in
prison.
#Then of course there's the classified portion of the budget...
jm
>
> Ross
>
> John Marlow wrote:
>
> > As to the issue you raise--asking to see your on-file info, this in
> > itself is considered reason for suspicion by governmental
> > authorities. The FBI, for example, maintains a file on anyone who
> > asks the FBI whether they maintain a file on them. If there was none
> > before the question was asked, one is created--so the answer is
> > always, "Yes."
> >
> > jm
> >
> > On 26 Apr 2001, at 16:31, Ross A. Finlayson wrote:
> >
> > ....
> > > For example, I normally would want the same information that various
> > > forms of local authorities have about myself only, but not other people,
> > > for them not being my business. What that means in terms of freedom of
> > > information is that they do not have privy to copyrights actually
> > > involving personal identity. So, I think the law should be that you
> > > should be able to ask some organization that tracks personal information
> > > if it has information upon you or where its sole provider of information
> > > upon you is, and to what levels they have access, where one simple
> > > request for your own or your dependents' personal information store's
> > > possible presense and its extent would be regular practice to actually
> > > receive that information readily, and the complete extent of local,
> > > personal information readily......
> > >
> >
> > John Marlow
>
> --
> Ross Andrew Finlayson
> Finlayson Consulting
> Ross at Tiki-Lounge: http://www.tiki-lounge.com/~raf/
> "It's always one more." - Internet multi-player computer game player
>
>
John Marlow
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