You are a car dealer or the poor grunt at a car dealer’s who has to deal with the rules for compliance to qualify a car for the clunkers program or to get reimbursed. You have an interminable wait to log on to the web page. Finally, you get on. This is what you see.
“This application provides access to the DOT CARS system. When logged onto the CARS system, your computer is considered a federal computer system and it is property of the United States government.
Any or all uses of this system, any or all uses of this system and all files on this system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed to authorized CARS, DOT, and law enforcement personnel as well as all authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign. By using this system, the user consents to such interception, monitoring, recording, copying, auditing, inspecting and disclosure at the discretion of CARS or the DOT”
I know it’s lot’s of legalese, but basically your government is saying you have just agreed to make your computer a federal computer and give your government total access to everything on that computer.
What is this all about? Who in their right mind would give the government both their computer and total access to same? I guess every car dealer in America who either sold or tried to sell a car with a trade in that qualified as a clunker has to compy. No choice. Who wrote this qualifier? The same people who sent the notices to all police departments in the country that returning veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan might be terrorists?
This is really scary stuff. In order to sell cars for clunkers you must agree to give your government total access to your computer. And, they can access it.
Now, nothing bad will probably come of this for one reason. The same people who designed the clunkers program would have to figure out how to use this access. If it were the Chinese government you might have to worry. They are pretty smart and might use this to their advantage. But, this is the US government stepping on your liberties. Recent history shows there are few if any employees in the current government who can figure out their tax returns let alone take advantage of illegal access to your records.
Every day we look more and more like Russia.
