From: Ross A. Finlayson (raf@tiki-lounge.com)
Date: Thu Mar 16 2000 - 07:51:05 MST
Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
> Slashdot had a pointer to the FBI site where they have the
> FBI files for a number of famous people "public" (probably
> was a huge financial drain to keep filling the Freedom of
> Information Act requests). See: http://foia.fbi.gov/alpha.htm
>
> Now the interesting thing is Einstein's file:
> http://foia.fbi.gov/einstein.htm
>
> A quick perusal indicates that an organization I'm unfamiliar
> with (The Woman Patriot Organization) tried to prevent Einstein
> from being admitted to the U.S. on the basis that he supported
> anarchy. Apparently, the total file is 1427 pages!!!
>
> An interesting site for you government & freedom buffs.
> Might get you talking about something *other* than your
> your current focus.
>
> Makes me wonder if I have a file, or if requesting it
> (if its empty) would make them start one.
>
> Robert
You could request one, then later request another. Maybe some other
entity tracks this or that, you would have to ask them. What would they
tell you? There would certainly be some record.
How does one go about requesting the FOIA right of access of all
government entities at once? That is, how does a citizen get the total
set of information stored by the government for that individual? How
about this, then, which government agencies or entities store
information on citizens? Heh heh, which do not? Of those that do,
which carry the Taxpayer Identification Number (aka Social Security)
which every citizen over five is required to be issued?
If the citizen does not have ready access to their data stored by the
government (of, by, and for the people) of all of its entities then the
government should have the same access as the individual. That would
mean hashing out all references to SSN. Where is the government form
and web page to request FOIA information from every agency at once?
I click on some links at the FOIA page (interesting reference),
sometimes it is necessary to click the links more than once. The
documents are scans of pages converted to PDF files. What tools does
the government provide to read these documents? How about their web
pages? (Government web pages are largely good and profligate.)
About vouchers the ability to encourage teachers, 1/25 of the military
budget would be an incredible boon to education, if applied to teaching
and students and not so much to administration. That would be about 1%
of a tax dollar. With the push towards computers in the classroom,
remember that the cost of one computer is more than that of other
things. If research and educational development are the keys to
economic growth (which they are), then any funds applied towards
enabling the youth above "subsistence" education lead to economic
growth.
If students are to learn about religion, they should learn about all the
religions of humanity.
Well, government is not all. Parts of it are good, other parts are bad.
Obligatory sci-tech note: on parser construction. Today we have reader
software to display documents, in the future we will have reader
programs that read and organize whatever data and apply expert system
templates that people can share to information to extract matter of
interest.
Ross Finlayson
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:27:26 MST