The Writings of Greg Palast

The Writings of Greg Palast: "SPIES AND LIES: STEAL YOUR DATA, STEAL YOUR VOTE
Drum Major Blog
Thursday May 18, 2006
By Greg Palast

There are kooks and cranks and crazies among you who think that George Bush lost the 2004 election. For example, there's an audio blog going around with TV star Larry David reading a story called,'Kerry Won,' a chapter in a book called, Armed Madhouse. I know, because I wrote it.

How you go about jerry-rigging a democracy has a lot to do with two other, seemingly unrelated stories, in the news this week: illegal surveillance of our phone records and the new border war against immigrants.

The glue between these three stories -- elections manipulation, War on Terror and War on Immigration -- is a four letter: data.

ELECTIONS: I'm an investigative reporter for BBC TV. In that job, in November 2000, I discovered that Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush knocked tens of thousands of African-Americans off Florida voter rolls -- thereby handing the Presidency to Brother George. The key to the vote heist was a database of supposed 'felons' whose registration was 'purged.' They were innocent, but hey, that's the data game for you. One man's abuse of data bases is another man's inauguration.

On to 2004: Same game, new data bases and more purges. But there was a new twist, 'caging lists' which I discovered within Republican Party files (how I got them, well, read the book). These were lists of HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of Black folk (and a few Jewish voters) -- i.e. Democrats -- whom the Republican Party secretly planned to challenge on election day. They did. It's illegal, but hey, when you steal the Presidency you get the Justice Department as a bonus and that means you control the civil rights enforcement cops. It's the perfect crime.

The challenges, by the way, were based on 'suspicions' about a voters' proper address. We went through the confidential sheets and found, for example, Randall Prausa, one of a large group of African-American soldiers whose addresses became 'suspect' because they were shipped overseas.

But you can't keep using data to bend elections without more data. Hence, the War on Terror, while thin on hunting terrorists, is fat with contracts to hunt for your data profile, from your finances to your voting reco...[ Click here for full article ]"