What does the GOP have to do with ChoicePoint data hacking?

[madhat]

roseeriter asks on dKos whether there's a connection between personal data being hacked from ChoicePoint and the GOP dirty tricks!

"Choicepoint Inc. has been in the news lately claiming that someone hacked them and stole hundreds of thousands of identities.

Well Katharine Harris-you remember her from Florida's 2000 Gore/Bush election? Seems she and Choicepoint have a direct link.
...

Bear in mind that Katherine Harris had been the co-chair of George W. Bush's Florida election campaign. She served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention. And she took time off from her job to campaign for Bush in New Hampshire. She even hired retired general Norman Schwarzkopf for a state-funded TV commercial encouraging people to vote, despite the fact that he was actively campaigning for Bush in Florida....

in 2000, Katharine Harris and Jeb Bush used ChoicePoint to purge the voter rolls of Florida of tens of thousands of African American "felons", and here they are, back in the news again, pay particular scrutiny to the description of their database."

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/1/64128/16425

[Kolesar]

1. Ruin some Dems credit

Blackmail them. Bush as usual.

[FreedomAngel82]

2. I know I heard

of them from somewhere. This past weekend I was rewatching the Greg Palast film and their name came up. So I knew I heard them from somewhere. :\

[madhat]

4. What did you hear?

I'm not surprised at anything they do. So it isn't J. Edgar Hoover anymore it's a "private" firm -- ChoicePoint -- but the M.O. is the same.

[EVDebs]

5. ChoicePoint is who FL hired to purge the voter rolls....eom

[EVDebs]

3. GOP is inside...Dems/Progressives are on the outside...

Total information awareness goes offshore
www.zmetro.com/archives/000901.php

It essentially hasn't gone away. TIA is now morphed into CAPPS II and going offshore (outside US jurisdiction and laws) to the Bahamas with Ben Bell's company.

During Watergate there was a thing to create martial law called the (Tom) Huston Plan. It never died and it never went away. The foundations were laid long ago

www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/27/1027497418339.html

Also, from Time Magazine (can't remember exact date...I think in 1997?) article on the Mormons, the FBI and CIA have a Mormon hiring preference. Unbelieveable, but that alone skews the conservative's lock on these essential democratic institutions. Too bad conservatives don't hold democracy in too high esteem.

[cornermouse]

6. Future frivolous lawsuit, don't you know?

[Coastie for Truth]

7. Won't be frivolous ---

but will be severely limited by Bush and Companies' "Class Action Law Suit Reform".

[Yosie]

8. Between ChoicePoint and Bank of America

the individual law suits (now that Class Action Law Suits are limited) will saturate the Federal Court system as these law suits go through "onesy-twosy."

With xerox and MS Word - consolidating these cases into a class action is to ChoicePoint's advantage. As individual law suits - it runs up Choicepoint's cost a lot more then the plaintiff's costs.

[EVDebs]

9. Funny thing is you don't hear much about the SAIC San Diego hack

which pulled the data on US intelligence professionals, like David Kay for example. They're all former (?) intel pros who worked for Science Applications International Corp out of San Diego...not much reporting on this story, huh ?

So if THOSE GUYS are getting hacked, that doesn't say much about the security of the Joe Sixpacks out there...

[Generic Other]

10. ChoicePoint's founder a cocaine smuggler

Am I the only one who finds this disconcerting?

******************************************************

Database Technologies was founded in 1992 by Hank Asher and "later merged" with ChoicePoint Asset Company (http://www.dpt.com). "In 1999, founded Seisint, Inc. by merging two companies. DBT competes with Seisint, Asher's later creation. He is no longer on Seisint's board of directors." <1> (http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Asher)

Database Technologies "administered the contract that stripped thousands of African Americans from the Florida voter rolls before the 2000 election, erroneously contending that they were felons."<2> (http://www.fepproject.org/commentaries/matrix.html)

Hank Asher was no longer with the company during this time according to Vanity Fair: "When maverick cyber-pioneer Hank Asher invented MATRIX—a controversial personal-information database—he gave the government a powerful tool for tracking terrorists. So why isn't he a hero?" <3> (http://www.vanityfair.com/commentary/content/articles/050131roco01)


http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Database_Technologies

Hank Asher -- a Boca Raton multi-millionaire called a patriot by a former Watergate prosecutor, consulted and admired by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani -- once smuggled millions of dollars worth of cocaine.

<SNIP>
"Hank Asher has done more to facilitate intelligence and information- sharing for police in the country than anyone I've ever known," FDLE director James T. "Tim" Moore said at his 2003 retirement party. "He's a patriot, a true friend."

"Every investigation we have ever had since the early '90s has used his program," said Phil Ramer, special agent in charge of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's Office of Statewide Intelligence. "He transformed law enforcement, no question about it."

Even then, rumors were swirling about Asher's drug smuggling.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Hank_Asher