Crosstalk: November 29, 2017

Alex Newman is an international freelance journalist, educator and consultant. His articles frequently appear in The New American. He also writes for Freedom Project Media.

This Crosstalk looked at what's behind three pieces of legislation. The College Transparency Act (HR-2434), The Foundations for Evidence Based Policy Making Act (HR-4174) and The Student Privacy Protection Act (HR-3157), the latter of which will soon be reintroduced under a new bill number.

Alex noted that when you take these 3 bills and combine them, it appears that the foundation is being laid to begin compiling a comprehensive document outlining every component of your life at the federal level. At the moment this process is scattered, with Health and Human Services having some data and the Education Department having still other data. Much of it is still concentrated at the state level, so the federal government is giving grants for the states to begin sending that information and to link the various databases together.

What's ironic is that when you look at the titles, you'd think these bills are about citizen privacy when in fact they aren't. Jim was reminded of the Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act (HIPAA). We were told it was all about privacy yet the privacy they speak of is that they will keep certain information from your spouse but not from government agencies.

Alex explained how this works with schools as well. What they mean by privacy in this instance is that they won't tell parents if their son is walking around in a dress at school calling himself 'Lucy', yet the federal government can know anything they want. They can know about the dental health, mental health, the well-being, the socio-economic status, and the religious views of the child. So when they talk about privacy, they're really talking about keeping data from husbands and wives, parents and children, while at the same time keeping things totally transparent as far as what the federal government wants to see and know.

As this program progressed, Jim and Alex discussed the following:

--Over one million dollars to create, develop and deploy a friendly robot called EMAR to track the mental health of children.
--The data collection required for implementation of HR-4174.
--The central planning behind such pieces of legislation.
--What this means for hackers.

..and much more.