

Main Core – database of US citizens believed to be threats to national security - gasull
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Core

======
salimmadjd
What transpired in Turkey can easily happen in US. There are many dissatisfied
people on either side of the political spectrum. Now more than ever, with
higher unemployment and extensive communication channels, the risks are even
higher. But there are ways to keep the population at check:

1 - Utilize the fear of external entities (Iraq, terrorism, etc.) to channel
away anxiety from domestic issues.

2 - pre-occupy the public, reality shows, sports, etc.

3 - Focus the problem on individuals to provide the election as a escape valve
(Bush, Obama, etc.)

4 - Quickly stop or discredit any movement before it catches on like wild
fire.

5 - Identify potential instigators and defuse them early if needed (shutdown
bank account, credit card, ATM) terminate their phones and Internet-which is
why you need this list. , etc-which is why you need this list.

Edit:fixed formatting

~~~
samstave
6 - (but really #1) Eliminate financial freedom of the populous.

What do you think 2008 was about?

~~~
MichaelMcQuirk
Is that not just giving them a reason to rebel?

~~~
anigbrowl
Conspiracy theorists tend to miss obvious things like that.

~~~
Ihmahr
Are you calling Noam Chomsky a conspiracy theorists?

~~~
twoodfin
He might not have, but I sure will.

~~~
flyinRyan
Amazing. Chomsky is a legend. Who are you exactly? Ignoring his entire career
to simply dismiss him as a conspiracy theorist. Ignorance and apathy like
yours is why the US has fallen into the hole it's in now.

~~~
twoodfin
I'm not ignoring his entire career. He's one of the towering intellectuals of
the 20th Century, and his work in linguistics has positively influenced a
range of fields.

But his views on politics and world affairs are extremely eccentric, and have
remained on the fringe for a reason.

~~~
flyinRyan
>and have remained on the fringe for a reason.

Yea, for the same reason people who claimed the US was spying on everyone
remained on the fringe.... until we had a bunch of evidence of it dropped on
us.

~~~
Ihmahr
Also, Chomsky's work is always backed by an incredible amount of evidence.

Edit: I can not over emphasize 'incredible amount of evidence.'

~~~
twoodfin
Don't confuse footnotes with evidence.

------
dfc
It looks like all four of the citations on wikipedia ultimately lead to:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20080831101327/http://www.radaron...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080831101327/http://www.radaronline.com/from-
the-
magazine/2008/05/government_surveillance_homeland_security_main_core_01.php)

~~~
samstave
Info about "main Core" has been around a lot longer than that article.

Main Core theory is the source for such speculation that they are after people
and keep a list of who to stop from spreading truth.

~~~
dfc
I am not saying its a lie, I'm just saying its a weakly referenced article for
wikipedia and/or a wikipedia article that makes it to HN. Please add the other
links to the wikipedia page.

~~~
samstave
Understood, wasn't saying you were - was just providing additional data
point...

~~~
dfc
Respectfully†, you were not adding another data point, you added another
anecdote.

† I am not trying to be a dick I really do mean respectfully. At a time like
this I think it is important to not get carried away with wild speculation.
Privacy has not gotten this much attention in a long time. I think we should
strive to make the best use of this opportunity as possible.

------
w_t_payne
After the last few days of headlines on HN, I am starting to feel a bit (a
lot) like a conspiracy theory wingnut. Am I going mad? Is it just me?

~~~
glurgh
Only if you apply the loose criteria conspiracy theory wingnuts apply. Like
with anything else, you should ask yourself 'what's the evidence? how
reliable/well-sourced is this story?'. In this particular case, the answer to
the latter is 'very poorly'.

A reasonable common-sense question is also - what use is a database with 8
million records in a situation dire enough to necessitate invoking continuity-
of-government procedures/martial law/etc. Who exactly is going to go out and
check up on 8 million 'potential threats' in case of, say, a nuclear attack?

~~~
w_t_payne
8 million tiny, poison-tipped drones.

------
cyphax
>Main Core contains personal and financial data of millions of U.S. citizens
believed to be threats to national security

Millions of US citizens believed to be threats to national security? Paranoid
much, US government? I don't see much of a reason tot trust that government;
it seems they don't trust you, anyway.

~~~
dfc
Not trusting the government was a founding principle.

~~~
cyphax
But does that mean the government by definition doesn't trust the people that
put them into power in the first place?

~~~
dfc
Have you read the constitution? Is the electoral college a sign of great
trust?

 _Sir, your people is a great beast._ \-- a.h.

------
euroclydon
I sometimes fret that a nation formed by a revolution, who's founding document
even seems to imply that revolutions are periodically necessary, would so
thoroughly protect itself from revolution. This database is a revolution-buzz-
kill.

Then I get bummed that after the Newtown shooting all the politicians who
wanted to enact tighter gun restrictions kept saying that you don't need an
assault rifle to hunt. I don't see anything about hunting in the 2nd
amendment. I always thought the second amendment was about preventing tyranny,
in which case a fully automatic weapon would be very useful.

But, the second amendment is probably more about state organized militias in a
time when the feds didn't maintain a standing army. I guess I'm going to have
to give up this idle revolution fantasy. It would probably suck anyhow --
there's no way more people will be fed than are now, wealth would be
distributed more equally, or due process would be better respected, after an
armed revolution.

~~~
trust-me
Let me tell you how useful an automatic weapon is against a swarm of drones:
not useful at all. Those drones are very similar to the laptops and tablets we
use everyday and can be mass produced in millions on the
Pentagon/Occupation/etc. 1+ trillion budgets. PRISM and company will just
supply the targets - leaders, current and potential, of an opposition.

~~~
jafaku
Don't those things need a (remote) pilote? How would drones without pilotes
work against a revolution?

~~~
trust-me
With the huge R&D investments of DAPRA&Co they need fewer and fewer people to
operate. It's not a problem to find a few dozens of loyal people ready to kill
kids and whoever else tries to disobey the orders.

------
gordaco
Something is very, very wrong with your government agencies when such a
sizable percentage of the population can be considered "threats".

~~~
mikecane
Or something is very wrong with a _government_ that would perceive so many as
threats -- or _create_ such "threats."

~~~
chiph
I don't see this (if it really exists) as being a product of government, per-
se, but of bureaucracy. If you come across someone who is vaguely
dissatisfied, and a list of malcontents exists, then you're going to shrug
your shoulders and add them to the list. Because leaving them off the list
would be risky, and no one ever got fired for doing the safe thing.

------
Natsu
For a moment, I thought they were talking about the Japanese internment camps
from WWII.

~~~
dfc
...and then you realized it says 8,000,000 not 120,000 people.

------
seanp2k2
Welp, I'd bet that the majority of people here on HN who care about stuff like
this are on this list.

~~~
university
HN makes it easy for the NSA to collect names. Recycle your HN profile
regularly. Green is the color of privacy.

~~~
w_t_payne
There are no reasonable steps that I can take to maintain anonymity. The most
I can do is to counter my inbuilt bias to self-censor; to be as outspoken and
uncaring-of-the-consequences as possible. Punk is the only and correct
response to surveillance.

(Hence my previous straw-man reactionary paranoid collaboration).

~~~
xradionut
There used to be anonymity, but it's too late to start now. I've met a few
people, (outside of the homeless community or the third world), that are truly
anonymous in the practical sense of the word. It's not something that 99.99%
percent of people would consider or desire.

------
alan_cx
So, we have people claiming that FEMA(?) have all these dormant prison camps
all over the US waiting to lock millions of Americans up in the even of.....
well, who knows?

Well, if Main Core is correct, these people have to go somewhere. If the
prison camps are only in the imagination of loon conspiracy theorists, where
would these 8 million go?

Strikes me the US, probably my lot in the UK too, needs a truth and
reconciliation commission.

~~~
twoodfin
Or hn needs to get over its sudden decision to become a mashup of /r/politics
and /r/conspiracy.

Really, this is first rate nutty stuff. Did you know the U.S. government has a
database containing records on hundreds of millions of its citizens (and even
some non-citizens!)? It contains records of where you live, which causes you
support and how much money you make. Some people in this database are flagged
for "special attention" by government agents who conduct an even more thorough
trawl through personal lives.

Of course, that's the IRS. Maybe some of us would prefer a taxation scheme
that didn't require all this infrastructure, but there's nothing deeply
nefarious about it.

It's one thing to be unhappy or disturbed by the alleged degree of NSA data
collection on U.S. citizens, but when you start speculating about FEMA prison
camps you've gone over the edge.

~~~
MisterWebz
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5879204](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5879204)

~~~
twoodfin
I think alan_cx greatly exaggerates the extent to which anyone claiming that
the NSA might be intercepting communications (which is, of couse, their job)
was described as a "conspiracy theorist" prior to revelations about how the
program actually worked. What exactly did people think the NSA did?

By alan_cx's logic, we can't call people who think there are frozen aliens at
Area 51 "conspiracy theorists" either.

------
blots
Reminds me very much of this:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge)

Well, as a possible consequence.

------
cmdkeen
The bit that seems to me more poorly sourced is the purpose of the list - the
idea that it is there for the investigation, detention or as someone has made
the leap to Stalin level purges.

If you're planning for Continuity of Government you aren't looking to handle
detaining whole swathes of your surviving population. However you may want a
database to be able to check people coming forwards to be involved in civil
society after such an event.

Surely there are enough people on here who have watched Jericho and Revolution
to understand that civil society is really vulnerable in the aftermath of a
catastrophic event.

------
milesf
How do I find out if my name is on it?

~~~
hedonist
Why it's very simple, my friend:

(1) Just file a request with FEMA, DHS, or the FBI.

(2) Presto! Doing so will mark you as suspicious, and subject to surveillance,
questioning, and/or internment during times of national crisis.

------
wavefunction
Come at me bro

------
api
I'd be incredibly surprised if every government on Earth doesn't have
something like this.

That being said, that doesn't mean it's good. How "dirty" is that data set,
for starters?

------
bravoyankee
Keep in mind that detained may be for a long time, indefinitely in solitary
confinement and without charges, in one of the _many_ prisons the US
government has been building in recent years:
[http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-
unit...](http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-united-
states-big-business-or-a-new-form-of-slavery/8289)

------
CleanedStar
The Wikipedia article is correct and covers most of it. Technically it is
correct the current list is from 1982. But really the list surfaced in 1950.

Another Wikipedia article to check out is
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarran_Internal_Security_Act#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarran_Internal_Security_Act#Provisions)
. The provisions of that act are more-or-less the same thing - a reversal of
the idea of habeas corpus. It grants the executive branch power to
indefinitely detain masses of political dissenters without trial. The
provision that allows this was proposed by the champion of US liberalism at
the time, Hubert Humphrey.

That 1950 list is the 1982 list and is also the current list. Of course the
names change as times go by, but the purpose is the same. For the government
it is a good idea - it worked pretty well for Germany and Italy - you get rid
of troublesome nationalities and political dissenters. It works well and makes
a lot of sense for them. Of course I myself don't condone it.

