President Obama’s Database: Information on Everyone

Here is a video of Representative Maxine Waters explaining that President Obama has put together a database that “…will have information about everything on every individual in ways that it’s never been done before.” Searching for the video, I only find it on “conservative” websites, the most “mainstream” of which is the Fox News site I’ve linked to here.

Representative Waters is referring to the president’s “Organizing for America,” set up as a 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organization for the benefit of Democratic political candidates, according to Representative Waters’ description.

As an organization that has “information about everything on every individual,” it sounds more invasive of people’s privacy than the NSA, as Representative Waters describes it. Also, she makes it sound like a political organization, which surely will raise the alarms at the IRS about its tax-exempt status. (This last sentence is meant as a joke, for those who can’t hear the tone of my voice through the internet.)

I tend to be skeptical of accusations like this, but this one is being made by one of President Obama’s big supporters. I assume President Obama will be able to explain this one to us, just as he has been explaining the information-gathering activities of the NSA.

Randall G. Holcombe is a Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute, the DeVoe Moore Professor of Economics at Florida State University, and author of the Independent Institute book Liberty in Peril: Democracy and Power in American History.
Beacon Posts by Randall G. Holcombe | Full Biography and Publications
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